


Every Map is Blank

by ladyflowdi



Series: Words May Fail [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Dubious Morality, Ethical Dilemmas, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Intersex Loki (Marvel), Jotunn Biology (Marvel), Kid Fic, Kid Loki (Marvel), Magic, Marvel Jotunn Culture, Odin (Marvel)'s Parenting, POV Loki (Marvel), Pre-Thor: The Dark World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 10:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 49,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18602293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: Loki doesn’t know what has happened, or why he is gagged like an animal, and – and there are chains around his arms and legs, his shoulders and neck and waist, weighing him down, smothering him,burning him. The elves, it must have been the – hadn’t Pabbi told them to stay in the palace while the elves were in Asgard? Thor had said going to the market would be safe but Thor wasstupid.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the year after the first Avengers film and before the events in Thor: The Dark World, and is set firmly in my Words May Fail universe, where there is no question that Loki was being controlled by Thanos throughout the first Avengers movie. You don't have to read Words May Fail to read this story and it comfortably stands alone. Mostly, I wanted to write a story about Odin and Loki and their relationship. Any father who collapses into a magical coma after his kid finds out he is adopted in what is - arguably - the worst way imaginable is a man who loves his child. Putting that kind of story into the Words May Fail universe really made me think about the concepts of forgiveness, empathy, and love, which are arguably my favorite things to write about. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> A quick warning: Loki is intersex in this story and struggles with accepting who he is, given that he lives on a crap planet with crap role models and a crap warrior's culture. Though that changes by the end of the story, please be warned if that is a trigger for you.
> 
> Also: A MILLION thank yous to [wideblueskies](https://wideblueskies.tumblr.com/), who betad this behemoth like a boss. Thank you so much! 
> 
> Also #2: This story was completely 100% inspired by the adorableness of  
> [this sketch](https://www.deviantart.com/lessienmoonstar/art/A-Little-Love-424535659) by the super talented [hannahyesss ](https://hannahyesss.tumblr.com/).

Loki opens his eyes to the gleaming spires of the Great Hall.

He and Thor had spent countless hours here playing, chasing one another until their knees were weak and they panted for breath between laughter. Sometimes, when it was only the two of them, when Thor’s idiot friends were blessedly occupied elsewhere, he and Thor would sprawl out on their backs in the very center of the room and look up, up, up, to where Hlidskjalf almost touched the sky. It had seemed to him as if the very stars themselves would tumble down from the velvet night, pierced by the light and majesty of the Aesir. His brother, as beaming and bright as bottled sunshine, would regale him of the tales he had read when they should have been at their studies, of mighty battles and wars fought over lost loves, of the conquering of these very stars by their father.

Now he feels no such pleasure, lying here staring above, only a pain so deep and terrible it takes his breath away. His skin is _tight_ , like the time he fell asleep in the orchard playing with Thor and woke up sunburnt and red, though it feels worse than that, like bees stinging him all over. People, he can see people near him, standing so tall over him, _staring down at him_ , and there’s something strapped over his face, something in his _mouth_ , huge and heavy and weighing down his tongue. When he gags on it and tries to pull it free, heavy chains clamped around his wrists rattle and sing. He can’t remember what’s happened, _what has happened_ , and he shrieks into the metal filling his mouth, yanking at it, _choking_ on it, and the pain in his head spikes so badly that he can’t help it, he vomits and it’s trapped in his throat and going up his nose and then Pabbi is on his knees, cradling Loki’s head in his large hands, commanding, “ _Calm yourself_ ,” but Loki is choking and Pabbi lifts him up and turns him onto his stomach and the vomit is trapped, _it’s_ _trapped_ _and he’s suffocating_. One of Pabbi’s warriors crashes down at their side in all his armor and he can feel their hands on the _thing_ over his face, yanking at it, _pulling_ at it, and Mamma is crying, Loki can hear her, but then Pabbi snarls something and the gag is free and Loki vomits and vomits, and it’s red, it’s _red like blood_ and he can’t even cry because _he can’t breathe._

It takes a long time for it to stop, and Loki can’t stop jerking and gasping and the blood is everywhere, all over his hands and his front and the floor and Pabbi’s robes, and the warrior is staring at him in horror, and the wail that comes up out of Loki is awful and wretched and out of his control. Pabbi holds Loki’s aching head in the crook of his arm, sitting on the floor of the Great Hall like a commoner, and when he says now, “Calm, my son, it’s over,” the pain starts to lessen and he can finally breathe.

The chains are all over him, so heavy around his arms and legs and shoulders and waist, weighing him down, smothering him, _burning him._ They feel prickly like sometimes when Loki gets too close to Pabbi’s special shelf in his study, where he kept all the magic things he had collected over so many years. Only the prickliness is the worst it has ever been ever in his whole life, and he is hurting and hurting.

The elves, it must have been the – hadn’t Pabbi told them to stay in the palace while the elves were in Asgard? Thor had said going to the market would be safe but Thor was _stupid_.

Where is Thor? Where is –

The market. Something happened at the market. His brother isn’t here, and Loki is chained like an animal, caught up in elven magic like a rabbit snared. He can’t remember, only that – that Kieran’s pabbi had the thread they needed for Mamma’s shawl, and Thor said it would be _fine_ if they slipped out for a few hours, but Thor thought everything would be fine, especially if he brought his stupid friends along, as if pimply-faced idiots who hadn’t even started their warrior’s training would be enough to deter a – a robber or kidnapper, or anyone else who wanted to do something to the princes. And Pabbi had _said_ not to stray from the palace, that the elves were mischievous and had their own rules regardless of Asgard’s wishes, and Thor had ignored him and now there is an awful blank in Loki’s memory, but something must have happened, something –

Surely – surely Thor isn’t –

Pabbi looks down upon him with a thousand burdens weighing in his eye, and Mamma is crying like he has never seen her cry, her hands clasped over her mouth, and Loki’s world narrows to a pinprick.

He fights against Pabbi’s hold until the pain is such that the Allfather need only gather him close and murmur into his ear to make the world fall away.

 

.

Loki dreams of lovely and dreadful things, caught in the peaceful place Pabbi had sent him. He dreams of wheat fields, and a double-wide, neat as a pin. He dreams of bright blue skies and fluffy white clouds and the old hound dog that liked to lick his ankles sometimes and Mama making cupcakes for Thor’s school. Thor would get mad when Mama didn’t let him put the sprinkles on, but it weren’t fair anyway because Thor got to have friends and learn reading and Loki was too little still to go to school, _real_ school and not Church Daycare where Mama took him sometimes when she had to go to her doctor’s appointments. It weren’t fair so Mama let him put on the sprinkles, red ones for the Valentines cupcakes, and they looked like the way her blood did against the shattered glass of the lamp.

Loki is wet between his legs and Daddy is staring at him, but they’re frozen, like ice. There is a man standing behind Loki, long spidery fingers grasping his arms, turning him away from the blood pooling around Mama’s head, from Daddy’s blank eyes.

Loki looks up at the man and sees only a flash of green, green eyes and black stitches before he startles awake with anguish like a stone in his chest, his eyes hot and overflowing into his pillow.

The blanket his mother had made for his seventh name day is tucked over his shoulder, cozy and warm against his cheek, and he burrows against it. The doors leading to the terrace stand open, for all that the sky is gray and rain is plink-plinking against the marble balustrades in a steady downpour. The rain brings with it the smell of greenery and dampness, flowers and moss, and reminds Loki of Mamma’s garden.

Pabbi is standing in the open doorway of the nursery, speaking with someone in the hall. Just this morning his hair was thick and golden, twisted into the complicated plaits he favored and woven with healing and protection beads. Now it falls gray around his wide shoulders, and the braids are different and ever-more complicated, but without the beads that Loki has seen every day of his life. Under the light of Hlidskjalf, Pabbi’s hair had been white as snow.

 _Hlidskjalf_. The chains, the metal that had filled his mouth, the blood sour at the back of his throat. The realization that Thor – that Thor –

Loki has failed in the one task Pabbi ever gave him, the most important task of a second prince: to protect the heir of the kingdom.

Thor, his brother, his best friend, the person he loved more than anyone in this entire world, is dead.

“Loki?” Pabbi says, but Loki is gone, gone, gone.

There is grief, so much grief, in the pull of his father’s mouth when he sits at Loki’s side. The very weight of the world has settled on his shoulders and drawn them low, making him seem so much older than he is, to match the gray of his hair, the lines of his face, the creases at his eye. “My boy,” he says, with more tenderness than Loki can ever remember hearing. “How do you feel?”

He tries to speak and it is but a croak. Pabbi helps him sit up, helps him wrap his hands around the glass of water from his bedside. It is cool and crisp on his tongue and tastes like iron, and it burns like scalding hot fire down his ravaged throat. His nose is running something awful and – and he wonders where Mamma is, wishes for her so desperately that his chin shakes, and Pabbi murmurs, so gently, “What do you remember?”

The acid of his tears blisters his eyes. “I don’t know,” he sobs, grinding his fist to his head where it pulses with pain just above. His fringe is damp with sweat and he feels hot and cold in turns, shudders racing down his spine. “Thor and I went to the market, I know we aren’t – we aren’t to go alone while the elves are here, but we needed flax thread for Mamma’s name day gift, and, and I don’t remember what _happened_ , there is a terrible pain in my head.”

Pabbi brushes his hair back from his brow and Loki turns his face to his father’s palm, holds it there with both hands as if his father’s touch can stop the pain. “I will ask you strange questions. I ask that you answer them with honesty, even if you are afraid.”

Behind his father the warrior dares enter, silently closing the nursery door behind himself with a grace of movement that speaks to his skill. He is enormous, carrying war on his skin as easily as he carries Mjolnir, and Loki knows his mischief has finally gone too far, that he took the wrong path to lead them here to these terrible circumstances.

If the warrior needed Mjolnir, Asgard’s prized relic, to rescue the princes, then all hope is lost.

His father grips his hand tightly and brings their palms entwined to his chest, where beneath his tunic his heart beats strong and sure. “My son. You have seen nine passes of the stars.”

“Please tell me what happened Pabbi,” he sobs. His father flinches and Loki doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what he’s _done_ , and his tears are like the sun, burning his heart and throat and eyes to cinder.

“You have come to know of your seidr, but do not yet wield it.”

It sits beneath his breast, warm and alive and as much a part of him as his heart. His mother’s seidr, green like growing things and one of healing and empathy. Women’s magic, which Loki has tried so desperately to ignore, to hide, to pretend wasn’t as much a part of him as his blood and bones and beating heart.

None could hide from the Allfather.

His father’s gaze has him trapped, as easily as a bird caught in a cage, and he can’t look away. He recognizes his father’s seidr as it brushes against his own, the flavor of it, the strength which had always been so comforting and now terrifies him in some way he can’t explain. “What do you know of the Chitauri?”

Loki is shaking so badly now that his words tremble, his tears such that he can barely speak. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Do not lie, child,” Pabbi says, thunder in his words, and the walls shake and the Chitauri must have been what killed Thor but Loki _can’t_ _remember_ , he doesn’t understand.

His father’s eye fills with the inky black-gray of his seidr, so unlike Loki’s own bright and fizzy green. Pabbi’s magic is one of battle, of _war_ , the same that he had used to crush his enemies under the might of the Aesir until he rebuilt the foundation holding up the Nine Realms. It transforms his face until the very light of Yggdrasil glows from within him, until Pabbi drops away and sitting before him is the God of Battle his father is, and so terrible to behold Loki can’t look away. The Allfather is the endless abyss that circles their world, the being who drove his spear through Laufey’s kingdom, who called upon the fire in the sky and rained it down on his enemies, who conquered the very stars. His gaze pierces Loki’s soul with frightening ease, seeing him for everything he is and everything he isn’t, his faults laid out in stark relief.

And then, just as suddenly, he is Loki’s father once more and Loki comes back to himself to hear his own screaming.

Pabbi is speaking but Loki can barely hear the words over the pound of his heart, his own terrified cries. His father pulls the blanket Mamma had made him warm around his shoulders, brushes his fingertips over his cheeks where the tears fall, where Loki shudders. “My son,” he says, his mouth pulled taut, his face so pale Loki can’t look at him. “Do you love me, and your mother, and your brother, as we love you?”

“I am unworthy of it,” Loki sobs, burying his face in his blanket.

The warrior says, from beside them, “You will always be worthy, Odinson.”

For all that his brother has died, for all that the warrior saved them, Loki doesn’t want the dread to become realized, doesn’t want to accept what he already knows as truth. That’s how he knows he must speak it, must give it life. Skildir always told him that to hide behind weakness was a sin, and Loki knows, more than anyone, just how full of sin he is.

“What did I do?”

“Do?”

“ _My brother_ ,” Loki says, angry that his agony should be prolonged, and so wretched in his grief. “Thor is—” He almost can’t say it, can’t believe it, this new reality where he is alone, where he has _failed_. “Did Thor die because we went to the market alone? I told him and told him, but he wouldn’t _listen_ and I tried my best, but it wasn’t good enough, it’s never good enough, and now my brother is gone and it’s my fault, it’s – _it’s my fault_.”

The warrior stares at him, wide-eyed. When he looks at Pabbi, they say a thousand words with a glance. The warrior approaches and kneels at Loki’s bedside, pausing only when Loki cringes from him, though only for a moment. He sets Mjolnir at his knee and brushes his hair from his face, tying it back, and now Loki can see his strong cheekbones, his dark blue eyes, the gentle smile under the thick beard. The warrior takes Loki’s hand carefully because his own are enormous, scarred and calloused and strong. “Your grief is misplaced,” he says, with great tenderness. “Do you not yet recognize me?”

“No, my lord,” Loki says, bowing his head low. The tears that had never stopped grow ugly and fierce again. “When Allfather gave me my title he said I had to guard Thor with my life, and – and I have failed, and I accept the punishment you must give me.”

“Loki,” the warrior breathes, so rough Loki can hardly understand him. He gently tips Loki’s chin up. “Your brother is not dead. He is kneeling before you.”

It is a falsehood, a lie, a trick. Loki is good at them, has _always_ been good at them, and this must be one too – he is himself, Loki son of Odin, Sovereign Prince of Asgard and Protector of the Realm. A good student, a boy who loved playing ball, and making mischief, and telling jokes at his brother’s expense just to make Lady Sif laugh. _It must be a falsehood._ Loki is good at falsehoods, but he cannot see deceit in the warrior’s face. Rather, he sees the echoes of – his eyes, that laughing blue, and the upturn of his nose. Arrogance, too, though it’s softened by the helm he wears, heavy on his shoulders and with it the responsibility of their realm. He sees good humor tempered by duty, and battle-weariness like Loki has only ever seen echoed in the identical blue of his father’s remaining eye.

None but the future king of Asgard could ever wield Mjolnir.

He does not understand what has happened, only that the man kneeling at his side is his stupid, short, funny and best brother.

Loki has only seen nine passes of the stars. His hands are small, his body is as it was when he went to sleep yesterday, here in the nursery with Thor in the bed across from his, who was always hiding his books of adventure and romance from Lady Hilda, as she was apt to scold him for reading such nonsense. He is overcome with dizziness, but when he blinks the warrior is still before him smiling that familiar smile. “I don’t understand,” he whispers, shaking his head as if the action could rattle an explanation free.

His father takes Loki’s other hand, turns it palm-up. As Loki watches, Pabbi touches a fingertip to the center where the life lines are closest and a glowing rune appears, a deep orange like the light of the setting sun, brilliant and beautiful. It tingles under his skin, though the feeling is secondary to the heat of it at his joints and the base of his neck. “This is the mark of Sigrun.” He closes Loki’s hand, and each fingertip glows softly before the color fades away. “You have been very ill, Loki. This was the last course of action available to us, and the only way we could save your life.”

It seems impossible. It _is_ _impossible_. “I don’t understand.”

There is a deep arrow of sadness, an _anger_ in the warrior’s gaze that Loki doesn’t understand. There is so much that he doesn’t understand. “What is your last true memory?”

“Pabbi was holding a summit with the elves,” Loki says, staring at this man who would be his brother. “Thor and I slipped away from the palace proper to go to the market. We – we needed flax thread, the special one that Kieran’s pabbi sells at the tailor’s shop. Thor kept insisting on red, even though Mamma’s shawl is going to be blue. I’m making the dye with gooseberries and it has to be blue.”

The man’s face smooths now into a true smile. How could Loki had ever thought him to be anyone but his brother? The smile is unchanged on his face, wide as the swath of stars over Asgard. “We kept the dye cauldron in Sleipnir’s stable, because you knew it would be the last place anyone would look for it.”

When Loki and Thor had hauled the cauldron into the stables at the dead of night, the horse had looked deeply into his eyes, as if he understood all Loki told him and did not approve of their mischief. It had been but a shiver of magic in the center of his chest, had excited him into laughter.  “He’s nice to us if we give him sweets from the kitchens,” he says faintly. “I feared he would kick our heads. He didn’t like us there.”

“Indeed he did not,” Thor says, smiling, though with a terrible sadness in his countenance that Loki doesn’t understand.

How long has passed? How many years has it been? Loki stares at Thor and feels an ugly panic dig deep into his chest. He wishes desperately for Mamma, her soft arms around him, her fingers gentle in his hair. He doesn’t know why she’s not here – only the fear of before, the certainty that he had done something terrible, haunts him, bites at his throat and stings in his eyes. She had been crying so much, in the Great Hall.

Skildir always told him that to hide behind weakness was a sin, but Loki cannot make his tongue move, cannot ask the question that needs asking.

He has always been the coward Skildir accused him of being.

“Am… am I better now?” he asks of his father.

Loki is startled to see his father’s face wet, that he has caused this to happen. He clambers up from his blankets and wraps his arms about his father’s neck, buries his face there near his bristly cheek as he has done every day of his life. Pabbi goes still for long moments, so long that Loki shrinks away from him. Only then does he wrap his arms around Loki and hug him just as tightly, his strong embrace around Loki’s thin shoulders. “Yes,” Pabbi says into his hair, cradling Loki’s head in his big hand. “Yes, my dear son. You are better now.”

 

.

The first inclination Loki has that this isn’t a terrible dream is when Lady Hilda doesn’t come to wake him up, singing as she throws open windows, with his clothes cleaned and pressed and ready for the day.

She had a voice like a nightingale. She would sing as she laid out clothes, and as she got the bath started, and when she poked at the bear-shaped lump that was his brother, who would growl and grumble from under his blankets. She sang as she brushed their hair, and as she laced their tunics, and as she delivered them to their mother’s breakfast table, stopping only to drop a kiss onto each of their heads.

Loki thought he’d cried all his tears last night, held in his father’s arms, but he finds he has a few more this morning waiting for his great aunt, who may very well have passed to Valhalla as advanced in life as she’d been. He isn’t certain if he wants to know she’s gone where he can’t yet follow, but his heart cries out for her regardless, in ways he cannot control or escape.

He is just throwing back his blankets when a gentle knock comes at the door, and the warrior – _Thor_ – pops his head in. “Are you awake, brother?”

He’s in pale linens with light boots at his feet, his blond hair combed and neatly secured at the nape of his neck. There is no trace of the battle-hardened warrior, or the weariness in his eyes. So transformed it’s easier to see his brother in this enormous man, in his smile and good-natured exuberance. He fills the nursery near to bursting just with his presence and Loki soaks in the sight of him, amazed that this should be _Thor_. His brother was foolish and funny and brave, and he liked to monkey up trees and jump into ponds, run races with his stupid friends and have grand adventures as far away from their mother’s watchful eye as he could get without scolding.

He isn’t the boy now, shorter than Loki and bad-tempered with it, for all that Loki was second son and ought to be the smaller of them. Thor is _enormous_ , so broad and tall that even Loki, gifted with height, just barely skims his waist. It makes him seem very far away, as far as the years that separated them. He is a stranger now, made more so when he sees Loki weeping and says, “No, oh no,” and kneels before him, gathering Loki’s thin shoulders and gently hugging him.

“Thor wasn’t in his bed,” Loki says, hiding his shame as best he can there on his brother’s wide shoulder. His hands are shaking as he scrubs them over his face, and his lip won’t stop trembling. “My brother, he wasn’t here, I woke up and thought I’d slept late, but then Lady Hilda never came and I remembered.”

Grief tears at Thor’s expression, takes away everything that Loki recognized as his brother and leaves him a stranger. “You aren’t alone, brother. I know this is frightening, but soon you’ll come to know your family again, your friends, and all will be well. It’s only these first painful days that you must first get through. Know I will not leave your side until you are once more on steady footing.”

Loki is not much appeased, but there’s nothing that can be done. When Thor brushes the tears from his cheeks, smiles his big bright smile, and says, “You’ll feel better after a hearty meal. Come, let us break our fast together,” Loki knows he has no choice but to get out of bed and face the world head-on.

Loki takes the clothing Thor has brought behind his changing screen, because though it seems unlikely that Thor doesn’t know about his Otherness, he finds he feels too brittle to find out for certain. The clothes Thor has brought him are not his own, in varying and ugly shades of brown and blue, but they are warm on his skin and he finds them comfortable enough. Thor even brushes Loki’s hair, making even more of a mess of it, but a splash of water slicks it a bit and though Loki knows when it dries it will be a curly disaster, for now he’s presentable.

He takes Thor’s hand when they leave the nursery, as he has always done, and Thor looks down at him in surprise before squeezing his fingers. If Loki closes his eyes, the familiar smell of his brother, the cadence of his walk and the sound of his breathing, can almost fool him into believing all is well.

He feels _fragile_ in a way he is not accustomed to, so it is perhaps with little surprise that when they enter the dining hall together, morning sunlight just beginning to break over the horizon, he freezes at the sight of the warriors seated at the long table.

There is a man, long in his red beard who can only be a son of Lord Arnbjorg, and only one such son had ever been compatriots with Thor. He has a massive bowl of bread pudding in front of him and is speaking with a blond man sat at the head of the table. The blond man’s hair lies combed back from his brow, and a frankly ridiculous mustache is twirled at each corner of his mouth. Beside them sits a son of Vanaheim, his dark features smooth as glass.

Of course. Of _course_ they would still be Thor’s brothers-in-arms.

They weren’t boys anymore but grown men, and when they catch sight of Thor and stand, the knot of terror that had been steadily growing beneath Loki’s ribs sprouts teeth.

What defense could Loki possibly have now, against his tormentors?

“It’s true, then,” Volstagg says quietly, his blue eyes hooded as he stares at Loki with something in his expression Loki doesn’t recognize and can’t place.

If Thor towers over him Volstagg is _a giant_ , thick as a tree and just as tall. His long, heavy beard does little to hide the barrel of his powerful chest, the giant branches of his arms. Now… now, Volstagg is so large, so strong, so powerful that he could throw Loki across the room, could hang him from the rafters, tear him limb from limb. He carries an axe at his hip that’s as long as Loki is tall.

Volstagg had always been a brute but Fandral had been _mean_ , like a viper that waited to strike until you showed your belly. Loki had always felt wrong-footed with him, never knew whether to call him friend or foe. Fandral would just as likely smile at him as sneer, and some days the two expressions felt one and the same. His power was in his tongue, which lashed and drew blood, sometimes days after words had been said. Loki was quick with his words, too, but he’d never quite learned how to make them hurt as much as Fandral’s could. And still Loki would take him over Hogun, who didn’t care enough to speak to him or be his friend. His casual dismissiveness hurt worse than anything, because Loki understood that he mattered so little that he wasn’t even worth a passing kindness.

That Thor was friends with these idiots had never made any sense – that he took their council now as an adult meant that Loki was… had they been friends? Had Loki found his way round the Warrior’s Three? Had the angry pain of childhood given way to friendship and comradery as adults?

Somehow, he doesn’t think so.

They are adults, grown into their limbs and their power, and so formidable that the panic Loki barely has under control takes over. This is real. This is happening. This isn’t a terrible nightmare he’s waking up from, a fever dream where he’s caught like a beetle in a spider’s web. His father is old. His brother is a grown man. And the Warrior’s Three now have power over him they’ve never had before.

They’re staring at him, and Loki realizes he’s rooted to the floor. He can’t quite seem to catch his breath.

Thor is still holding his hand, looking back at him with confusion written across his broad face. Loki wants to believe – wants to believe it’s alright now, that Thor came to understand how tumultuous his relationship with the Warrior’s Three had always been.

It was only a few months ago that Loki had humiliated Volstagg in front of Lady Sif, had made him fall ass over tit in front of her like a toe-tied idiot. That she had laughed so hard and for so long had added insult to injury. Volstagg was the third youngest son of an ancient House, fat as a hog and pimple-faced at eleven passes of the stars. He had been big, so much bigger than Loki, but not big enough for his bit of revenge. No, that had taken all of them.

He had to hand it to them, they planned it well. They waited until Baldr and Braggi had left with Uncle for their annual pilgrimage to the Temple of Light, when they knew Loki would be vulnerable without the strength of his best friends. They had grabbed him from his bed in the middle of the night, gagged him with a kerchief and tied his hands and feet together, Volstagg’s awful, stinking breath in his face. Loki had screamed and shouted every obscenity he knew, to no avail. Thor had been shouting too, he remembers, and demanding they stop, but it had mattered not. Volstagg declared broken honor and would be avenged.

Loki had fought like a viper. His only consolation was that it took all of them to tie a rope around his ankles and throw him over the edge of the Rainbow Bridge.

They had stood above and laughed as he’d screamed in terror, as Lady Hilda’s voice whispered in his ear, _Take care when you play near the Bridge, dear nephew. If you fall over the edge you will fall forever, straight to the heart of_ _Yggdrasil’s_ _glory._ They had laughed when Loki vomited, and when he soiled himself. When his eyes rolled back into his head.

It was Heimdall who had pulled him up, who had wrapped him, ice-cold and shaking, in his great cloak. Loki has no memory of Heimdall’s rescue or the hours that followed, catatonic with terror that he had almost fallen into the void, that they had almost sent him into an existence of eternal damnation in the fathomless black spaces between the worlds for having dared humiliate the great Volstagg in front of a lady.

When court was held, the three of them brought before Allfather for judgement, Loki thought that finally, _finally_ Pabbi would recognize their constant torment for what it was, that he would understand why Loki never wanted to play with them, or why he only ever got in trouble when they were involved. Perhaps he would have, if Thor hadn’t tearfully intervened and made witness for the character of his comrades.

Thor was First Born, Crown Prince, Future of the Realm. His words held weight, whether he believed that or not. That he would _defend_ his friends after what they’d done, in front of Pabbi’s Court, had been like a dagger straight through Loki’s heart, so sharp that it would be days before the blood bloomed across his chest. Pabbi had listened and Loki was good at reading faces, he always had been, and he’d seen pride in Pabbi’s expression – pride that Thor had been loyal to his friends and defended them so ardently, that Thor was standing up for someone other than himself for once.

Pabbi had declared it high time that Thor and his friends begin their warrior’s training, to make them understand the importance of honor and duty. That the Warrior’s Three had been made to apologize to Loki for their actions meant nothing, not when their deed had won them the greatest prize of all – their warrior’s training beginning a year early.

And then, twisting the dagger in Loki’s heart, Pabbi had turned and scolded Loki for humiliating Volstagg in a manner not fit for a prince. Loki had been made to apologize to them for his mischief in front of the Allfather’s court. In front of Mamma.

That was the first time Loki had understood the truth of his life. He had always known that as second son he was an insurance against the worst, that he existed to protect his brother and make sure Thor came of age to one day sit on the throne of Asgard. But he’d never known until that day, his father standing above him angry and disappointed, that he _mattered_ less than Pabbi’s heir and first-born son, that his very thoughts and feelings were inconsequential, that the wrongs committed against him were forgiven if Thor wished them so. Loki had teased Volstagg in front of Sif and in return Volstagg and his comrades had threatened Loki’s life for the offense. And then to be made to _apologize_ , to look his tormenter in the eye and _ask for forgiveness_ had been more than Loki could bear.

He’d tried to explain it to his brother in the days after, when he found himself unmoored, close to an edge he never knew he had been teetering on, one he hadn’t been able to name until he’d looked at Volstagg’s self-satisfied face. Thor had come to Mamma’s rooms where Loki had found himself unable to leave, brought him sweets and his big, dimwitted smile, begged him to come play. When Loki tried to explain his despair and humiliation, Thor had said, uncomprehending, “It’s your place to be at my side, brother, to support me when I one day rule Asgard, just as it is now the duty of my friends to protect me when I am king. I won’t have you angry with one another.”

That was when Loki knew the truth of it. His brother considered him a possession, as surely as his toys and books, to do with as he pleased, as if all their lives were whim to Thor’s wants and needs. As if Loki’s life was already accounted for, and he had no choice in the matter.

He hadn’t spoken to the Warrior’s Three since. They were boys yesterday, rough-housing, shouting, playing together, while Loki looked on. Idiots, the three of them. Now he can see them behind Thor’s shoulder, their bodies rigid and faces stiff. They weren’t children anymore but men who towered over Loki, made him feel like the boy he was, frail in the face of their might.

What defense could he have against them, with his magic so new in his breast? How could he possibly keep himself safe?

Loki won’t cry in front of them, _he won’t_ , but he can hear the breath whistling out from between his teeth.

He wants to go home, he just _wants to go home._ Lady Hilda hadn’t combed his hair, and Mamma hadn’t taken his hand and walked with him to his first lesson, and Thor hadn’t teased him and gone sour when Loki teased back, and he and Thor were supposed to go to the lake and gather carp scales for Loki’s dye. There wouldn’t be time to make more if this batch didn’t work.

Loki realizes, with painful suddenness, that the dye is gone, because their gift was finished long in the past. Mamma’s shawl had aged in the time that had passed between that moment and this one, because Loki was a man grown and then became very sick, too sick to heal, so sick that Pabbi and Mamma could only save his life in this way, to take him to a time before the sickness took hold. Something had happened, something he had done – a curse, perhaps, something that had aged and withered him too, and he must find out, he has to _know_ , but who here can he possible trust? He is surrounded by the people he knows and a family he loves, and has never felt so alone.

He can see his brother’s lips forming his name, but Loki has lost the battle with his fear. Thor kneels before him and gathers him close, and Loki clutches at him as he always has, even when he hated himself for it. It matters not the scratchy beard, the wide chest – the smell of his brother is the same, the warmth of his embrace a balm against the ice surrounding his heart. Thor is murmuring nonsense into his ear, holding Loki tightly and combing his fingers through Loki’s hair, drying into a mop and hopelessly curly without Lady Hilda’s touch, his mother’s care. “It’s alright, brother,” he’s whispering over and over, so gentle, like Loki is made of delicate glass. “No one will hurt you here.”

Thor knows _nothing_ because it isn’t alright, _nothing about this is alright_. He could not tell his brother that he has already been hurt, a thousand times over. That Thor is part of the fabric of that hurt. Thor doesn’t see the danger of his comrades, never understood that they saw Loki as the annoying little brother who followed them everywhere, but Loki only ever followed them because it was his _duty_ to protect his brother.

“We didn’t think it true,” one of the men says behind them. Fandral. His voice is so much deeper now than the high notes of his youth. He holds himself with the strong security of a man who has the upper hand, of a man who knows how to use the sword at his belt. “Your father—"

“His life could only be saved this way,” Thor says, and pulls away enough to brush Loki’s shame from his cheeks with his thumbs. There is something ugly in his expression that Loki can’t read. He thinks his brother is angry with him, _embarrassed_ of him, but Thor’s touch is tender, a smile in his sad eyes. “It’s alright, brother,” he says softly, arranging Loki’s collar until it sits smooth. “Let’s break our fast, hmm?”

Loki hadn’t eaten with them since before the Rainbow Bridge. He doesn’t know how to tell Thor that he doesn’t want to see them, talk to them, sit with them as if all is well. Doesn’t know how to explain how much they scare him because their dislike is born of real resentment, for being the tag-along, for being smarter than all of them put together, for using his cleverness instead of his might, his tongue instead of his sword.

Thor takes his hand once more and guides him to the table, which is so tall it comes to his chin when he sits at the long bench. There are heaps of food, pitchers of juices and mead, but most of all there are the eyes of them, staring at him. He sits as close to Thor as he can, and knots his shaking hands together under the table.

“He is no older than my Gudrun,” Volstagg says, sitting heavily. He stares at Loki and Loki tries not to look back. Even seated he towers over him, his long red beard braided like his father’s.

Thor piles Loki’s plate with his favorite foods, bread and biscuits, elderberries and sweet pink apples that grew in the orchard he and Thor played in when the first spring apple blossoms began to bloom. He looks at the food so he doesn’t have to look at them, and somewhere along the way realizes he’s starving. The snakes roil in his belly, but he can’t help shoving a biscuit into his mouth, the buttery texture exploding over his tongue as he chews. Volstagg’s eyes are wet, and Hogun’s face is contorted with something Loki can’t name.

“He truly doesn’t remember his life?” Fandral asks, and he sounds so angry that Loki shrinks under it, tangling his fingers in the tail of Thor’s tunic.

“He is but nine,” Thor confirms, and smiles down at Loki. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “And a good and kind little boy.”

Loki jumps when Fandral leaps to his feet with a snarl and stalks away. Loki doesn’t understand, but Thor gently rubs his shoulders with one big hand. “We grieve for you, Loki – the loss of the man we knew, the place you filled in our lives. Our friend has been taken from us, and that is more painful than we expected it to be. Do you understand?”

The biscuit sits like a stone in his belly, and Loki’s chin trembles. “They were my friends?”

“Yes,” Hogun says, calm and quiet. “We were friends, even when your path diverged from ours.”

Thor tenses at his side and Loki says, helpless, “Pabbi said I was very sick.”

They stare at him, and then one another, and Fandral is growling something under his breath on the other side of the room. “Yes, my friend. You were sick,” Volstagg says, and reaches across the great table to offer Loki his big hand. Loki is terrified of it and what it can do to him, but more terrified of even a perceived slight. Volstagg is too big, too powerful now. He won’t be tricked by the likes of Loki, not anymore. Loki is helpless in the face of that might, helpless enough that he subjugates himself and gives him his own hand, so small in comparison, and trembling as Loki is trembling.

Volstagg doesn’t squeeze, or pull, or yank – instead, his touch is as gentle as Thor’s had been, as if he too is afraid of hurting him, as if he must be mindful of his strength. “We had many grand adventures together, fought side by side,” he begins quietly. “You brought great honor to the House of Odin, great honor to your family. The rivalries of our youth gave way to companionship and comradery, and we became inseparable, we five and the Lady Sif. We have cared for you as if you too were our younger brother. Do you believe this?”

He won’t, he _won’t_ , not in front of them, not where they might see his shame. He chews on his lower lip to control the trembling in his chin, swallows at the knot in his throat again and again, before he can look up and meet Volstagg’s gaze. “You were always mean to me.”

“Aye, we were,” Volstagg says, and folds his fingers over Loki’s small hand. “It is my greatest shame, that I was so awful to such a dear friend when we were children. Now you are a child once more, Loki, and do not remember the apologies I gave you over the centuries, or the friendship we had. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? Forgive us all?”

Loki’s chest hitches, and he rubs his cheek dry on his shoulder. He nods, jerking and uncertain, and the smile that blooms over Volstagg’s face in reply is like the sun. He beams, and Loki can’t look at it, or them, anymore, so he stares back down at his plate and eats his apple, ashamed and angry and sadder than he can remember ever feeling.

He hates lying, even when it serves a purpose.

 

.

Loki doesn’t see Mamma that day.

No one expected to have a princeling in the castle again, he thinks, because no one quite knows what to do with him. There are no lessons, as Loki learns that Skildir finally went to Valhalla in time past, though in his most private thoughts he thinks it unlikely Skildir ended _up_ in Valhalla, and if he did there is something dreadfully wrong with the whole institution. There are no visits to Loki’s most beloved and treasured place, the library, because it is no longer in the palace proper – it has been moved to the center of Asgard, near the Scholar House, where all could enjoy it, not just the royal family. For want of anything else, Loki trails Thor as he sits at his desk and writes, as he speaks at a council meeting on _grain_ of all things, as he talks to the guardsmen about the outer stable wall beginning to decay.

Eyes follow Loki everywhere. He can’t stand being observed on the best of days, but now their eyes burn into him like fire, judging him. They stare at him in the halls, on the training grounds, at the stables when Thor takes Loki to see Sleipnir. None approach or speak to him, and Loki’s heart has begun to cry out for Baldr and Braggi, his cousins and dearest friends in the entire world, who he could share everything with. He doesn’t know why they don’t come to see him, and only the thought that he has done something awful that keeps them away quells his tongue from asking.

Always, always the panic is alive under Loki’s ribcage, beating a tune against his bones.

That night, after Thor helps him change and crawl into his bed in the nursery, brushes his fringe from his forehead and wishes him a good night, Loki almost can’t wait for him to leave before the tears come on him.

He had always known he would grow to be someone who was friendless and without companionship – he was Other long before his body began to mature. But it had always been alright, because he had his family. He’d seen Pabbi in passing while he was receiving complaints in the Great Hall, and of course Thor had been at his side all day, but today had been the first day in his life that he didn’t see Mamma. She hadn’t come to fetch him for his evening bath, or tell him stories or sing to him, as she has done every night for as long as he can remember.

He knows, as surely as he recognizes the nose on his face, that his mother is angry with him. His heart cries out for her, but when just yesterday her magic would sing to him no matter where he was, now he finds the connection blocked, cold, like a steel door has come down between them.

His mother is angry, and the panic he had been keeping at bay earlier now knots in his throat. He doesn’t know how to control his magic without her, doesn’t know how to channel it without her guiding touch. All day he has felt it gather in his elbows and knees, the base of his neck and low deep in his back, a building pressure that Loki knows well enough will soon become unbearable.

If Mamma is angry with him, she won’t come take his seidr pain. He must find a way to make amends.

He thought maybe he could make her a picture – she liked it when he painted for her – but a picture is too small to right this wrong that he’s done. He thinks, then, of the first stage play he wrote for her, about a little rabbit named Princess Josie. The costumes had been a bit lacking, but Loki had only been six, and he has more experience now. He could write a story for her about – about the earliest Aesir explorer, Jormungandr, who came to the shores of Asgard when their Realm was still a sphere, who traveled the oceans of Asgard battling the monsters that would become their mountains, their sky, their trees.

The story is already humming in his head, but he has nothing to write it down in. The nursery is barren and empty, even with the fire burning brightly in the hearth in the center of the room. His hiding space under the floorboards is empty, his wardrobe barren. There is nothing here that is his, aside from the blanket Mamma made him – his books and his games and his lyre are all gone, let alone his writing desk.

He had been a man grown. Like Thor, he must have been given rooms away from the nursery when he got older. Loki scrapes his wrist over his eyes and climbs out of the bed, intent to find them.

When he opens the nursery door, a man sitting in a chair across from the doorway, with a broad sword laid over his knees, looks up.

Loki stares at him. The man stares back.

“Is all well, my lord?”

He’s so big that when he stands he towers over Loki, though it’s clear he’s trying not to. The voice would give him away, if the bristles on his chin didn’t – he is a relative of Volstagg’s, blue eyed and red cheeked.

“Yes,” Loki says, swallowing the fear, the confusion lodged at the base of his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry for,” the young man says quickly. “Your brother asked me to watch over you tonight, as he had business to attend to on Midgard.”

Loki’s breathing speeds up, though he would never give any relative of Volstagg’s the joy of seeing him shake.

Thor promised he would be here, he would stay close, but _he had lied_.

He has left for Midgard, and Loki is alone.

He swallows, pugging his chin up the way he had seen Thor do when he was trying to act princely and hide his fear. It didn’t suit him then, just as it doesn’t suit Loki now, but he has no other recourse. “What is your name?”

“Rolfe, my lord, first son of Volstagg and Hildegund, brother of Arngrim and Leif and Gudrun.”

Volstagg’s first son, a man before him. Loki’s head swims. He thought he’d had a grasp on how much time has passed, but the evidence before him tells him how very wrong he was. “I want my things, Sir Rolfe.”

“Your things?”

“Yes. You will take me to my rooms.”

“My lord, I don’t – ”

“You will do as I command,” Loki says, as imperiously as he knows how.

Rolfe stares at him. “Yes – I mean, yes my lord, of course, but I don’t know where they are.”

Loki glares. “Can’t you ask someone?”

“ _No one_ knows where they are. You enchanted them long before I was born.”

A thrill goes through him. His magic, strong enough to hide space, to mask his movements? Could he really be so controlled, so _powerful,_ to keep an enchantment of such strength going indefinitely?

On the heels of that thought is a much more pressing concern. Why would he feel the need to cloak his space from the world? Why would he, a man grown, _a prince of Asgard_ , feel that he must hide?

Loki has always been clever, too clever by half. At times like these he wishes he wasn’t, that he was more like his brother, who took everything at face value and trusted the word of others implicitly, even when he had no reason to.

“Why do you guard my sleep, Sir Rolfe?”

“You’ve been sick,” he replies, almost too quickly. “Your brother asked me to watch over you. He and my father will return on the morrow. Do you wish me to wake the Allfather?”

“No.” The last thing he wanted was Pabbi knowing about this. “I’ll ask him in the morning.”

“Yes, my lord. Rest easy. I will guard your sleep,” Rolfe says, and smiles.

It’s clear that Rolfe is not nearly as harmless as he is trying to appear. Strangely, it eases his mind – for all that Thor isn’t here, Rolfe _is_ , and if he’s even half the brute his father is, he does indeed make a decent guard. Loki just wishes he knew what he was guarding.

Loki turns back to the door, but stops and looks back. “Thank you,” he says, and Rolfe looks so shocked that Loki can say nothing more as he closes and locks the door behind him.

 

.

In the morning, Thor comes to fetch him. He doesn’t insult Loki’s intelligence by trying to hide his weariness, at the very least – instead, he sits at the edge of Loki’s bed, sighs as he stretches his legs out in front of him. “I’m very sorry, brother. I had unfinished business to attend to on Midgard, business which we will conclude this morning.”

He is wearing his light tunic and boots again, but Mjolnir is at his hip today, heavy on his belt. It amazes Loki that his brother should wield it. They had snuck into Pabbi’s vault many times to gaze at it, had made its replica from twigs and branches and had grand battles in the orchard. Thor’s eyes had gleamed with pride whenever in Mjolnir’s presence, as if he’d known that one day the mighty hammer would choose him.

His brother is sitting on his bed, and yet Loki’s aches for him, for the boy who was Loki’s entire world. He misses his impish smile with too-big teeth, his wild blond hair. That his brother is still here with him doesn’t matter in the slightest – Thor is an adult and busy with adult things. Thor leaves with great purpose to other realms. Thor is Crown Prince of Asgard, and spent four hours yesterday talking about grain.

Loki misses his brother so much. He’d know what to do in this new and terrible existence Loki has found himself in.

He wants to say a million things – wants to tell Thor that he _promised_ not to leave, that he swore an oath, but Thor is his lifeline for all that he is a stranger. To cause a rift in this relationship would be the worst thing he could possibly do when Loki is utterly alone, a boy in a world where there is no space for children.

He swallows it all and instead asks, from behind the screen where he is dressing for the day, “What is on Midgard? Have the mortals angered Pabbi?”

Thor laughs. “They do not worship him anymore, to his relief. They’ve entered the next part of their history – they have cities, government, technology.”

Midgard was a planet of farmers and hunters, axes and clay bowls, and now – cities? Technology? How many centuries has it been? He swallows against the surge of pain, rubs at the center of it in his chest. His hands tingle, and he squeezes each into a fist until the numbness in his fingertips goes away.

Loki comes out from behind the screen and his brother gives him that disarming smile of his as he helps button the sleeves of his tunic. “Rolfe tells me you were asking for your rooms.” Loki averts his eyes, but Thor thumbs gently at his chin until their gazes meet. “It is not an unreasonable request – of course you want your things. You outgrew the nursery long ago.”

“Sir Rolfe said I hid them,” Loki says helplessly. “Why would I do that?”

“You’ve always been the most private person I know, brother.”

Loki is beginning to understand that Thor has learned to hide many things behind that smile, that he has learned to use that guileless and naïve grin to his advantage. “You don’t know where they are?”

“Indeed I do not. Let us speak with Father, he may be able to track them down. In the meantime, a friend of mine from Midgard is here. He’d like to meet you.”

“From Midgard?” Loki asks, as Thor takes his hand and leads him out of the nursery. “I’ve never met anyone from Midgard. Is he nice? What language does he speak? Is he small? I expect Midgardians to be very small creatures.”

“So many questions!” Thor says with a laugh. “He is the leader of a band of warriors who call themselves Shield. Like Father, he can be a bit – coarse. Be on your best behavior.” When Loki smiles, he adds, “Or as the Midgardians say, ‘fake it until you make it’.”

Pabbi is seated at the high throne when they enter the hall, Gungnir in hand, as royal and unyielding as the King of Asgard need be. There are new people at Court in dark blue clothes, holding long metal devices that can only be weapons, and a man dressed in black waits on the dais before the throne. Like Pabbi the man wears a cover over one of his eyes, though scars peek out from underneath it, speaking to the wound that had caused the mutilation. His clothing is made of black animal hide, and his expression is grim. To say he strikes a menacing figure is an understatement. Loki freezes, but Thor gently tugs him along. He trots to keep up with his brother’s longer strides.

The man is openly staring at them as Thor and Loki bow to their father in respect. “You did say the situation had been taken care of, but this wasn’t what I was expecting,” he says, narrowing his remaining eye on Thor. “Care to explain?”

“Loki was ill, too ill for even Eir’s healing touch, and beyond aide of even the most skilled healers of the Nine Realms,” Thor replies. His brother learned discretion at some point, because his expression is a mask, blank and cool. Thor had said that this man was his friend, but Loki thinks those were just sweet words for a boy, as if Loki was too stupid to understand. “We know not what the Titan did to him, only that we could not remove his hold, which had spidered into his very being and embedded itself too deeply for any to reach. It spilled over to those under his thrall, including the Hawkeyed one. Despite your Professor Xavier’s efforts, they used their hold to torture him until he stood at the brink of death. This was the only way we could save his life.”

Titan? Torture? Loki remembers the chains, the metal in his mouth. He goes cold all over, sweat freezing at his neck and under his arms. He is suddenly very dizzy, and he grips Thor’s hand tightly so he won’t sink to the floor.

There is a vast and ancient intelligence in the man’s gaze, and Loki realizes that he is old, far older than he looks. His gaze seems to penetrate Loki down to the marrow, and he forces himself not to squirm under the scrutiny. The words Thor speaks are running in circles around his mind, but he can’t think on them, not yet, not here, with the man in front of them peering into Loki’s soul. “Is that right.”

“Do you ask if I am being truthful?”

Mjolnir vibrates where it’s lashed at Thor’s hip. It has always seemed to have a life of its own, even long before Thor came to wield it, but to see it, feel it through the grip of Thor’s hand, makes the seidr in Loki burn in his joints and low in his back.

The man is not cowed, though Loki doesn’t think it’s due to ignorance of the power Thor wields with his hammer. “How old is he?”

Thor has learned to hide much behind his smile, his bland exterior, but he has not yet learned how to keep his emotions in check while annoyed. “In Midgardian years, perhaps two hundred or so. On Asgard, Loki is a boy of nine.”

“Is that right,” the man says again. “And you’re sure he doesn’t remember his life before?”

“There is no life from before.”

For all that he is a small man, Allfather’s very presence seems to fill up all of the available space in the massive hall. His seidr is beautiful – it can inspire fear, but it can also calm and soothe. It is a balm to Loki’s weary heart, and he feels wrapped in it, cradled in his father’s embrace for all that Pabbi is standing at his throne with one hand behind his back, Gungnir at his side and his gray beard long. “The child standing before you will not be able to tell you what he has not yet lived.”

Loki can tell that the man doesn’t like that answer, but doesn’t understand why. “And what about my men?”

“My queen has been well at work, and is even now in the Healing Halls. She expects a full recovery for both,” Pabbi replies. “With their health returned to them, our continued assistance in the rebuilding of your city, and Loki healed, our reparations to Midgard will be fulfilled.”

“Will they,” the man says.

Thunder booms somewhere in the distance, and Loki jumps.

The man steps off the dais and down the steps from Pabbi’s throne. The Einherjar grow tense, which in turn make the men in blue tense, their grips tight on their metal cylinder weapons. The man comes to a stop before Thor and they stare at one another for long moments, before he crouches down before Loki. His scrutiny is impenetrable and deep, and Loki wonders if Fury lost an eye to rebalance the universe, because he’s pretty sure the man could have probably killed him if there’d been two eyes doing _that_ at him.

He sucks in a sharp breath.

Fury. His name is Fury, appropriate for someone who looks as dangerous as he does. But how can he know that? Loki has never seen this man before. Is it his seidr, reaching out its tendrils in question, or something from before, when Loki was a man grown?

“Hello,” he whispers.

“Hello,” Fury says. His gaze is fathomless, dark, filled with violence and honor and rage. A soldier through and through. “Do you know who I am?”

“My brother says you are his friend,” he says, and fights the urge to hide behind Thor’s leg. He flexes his fingers in his brother’s hold, reassuring himself of the firm grip. He doesn’t know why he’s lying, but something about this man unsettles him. “He said you are from Midgard, and that Midgard isn’t just farmers anymore. Are there truly cities now? I would like to see them one day.”

“I’ll bet.” Fury tips his head. “What can you tell me about the tesseract?”

The tesseract? “Grandfather was tasked with its safety by the Vanir, and brought it to be safeguarded in Asgard’s Vault because their people were engaged in civil war and they could no longer protect it,” Loki says. “It’s blue and glows. It’s very pretty.”

“Indeed it is,” Pabbi says, and descends the steps to where they stand. He sets his hand on Loki’s shoulder, and Fury’s frown smooths out to a peculiar emptiness as he slowly straightens. “It is the jewel of Asgard, and its protection one I take most seriously.”

One corner of Fury’s mouth goes up. “Alright, your highness,” he says. “I’ve got to be honest, this wasn’t the kind of solution I was expecting, but I can’t say it isn’t effective. I have your word that the situation is taken care of, and will _remain_ taken care of.”

“The King of Asgard makes no promises, and swears no oaths,” Allfather says. “We will discuss it no further.”

Fury looks back down at Loki, studies him as if Loki is a particularly interesting puzzle he’s trying to work out. “You’re luckier than you know, kid. See you around.”

They leave as quickly as they came, Fury and the blue soldiers with their odd weapons. Thor accompanies them back to the Bifrost, though Loki doesn’t know if it is to be sure of their safe return to Midgard, or to be certain that they left Asgard.

He looks up at his father, only to find Pabbi already gazing down at him. There is love in his eye, as there always is, and Loki wraps an arm around his waist and buries his face in Pabbi’s side. It makes him laugh, the low burr in his chest that Loki loves listening to, his big hand resting on Loki’s back. “You did well, my son.”

“Midgardians are scary.”

“They have grown much in the past millennia. One day soon they will take their place at our table, as one of the Nine.” Pabbi leans down, conspiratorial, his words just for him. “Would you like to hear a secret?”

Loki grins. “Yes.”

“I like them.”

His _father_? The man who had spoken of Midgardians as primitive children, barely capable of speech? “You do?”

“They have grown to be strong beings who stand firm in their resolve. That is an honorable trait, don’t you agree?”

Loki chews on the side of his lip. “I suppose so, but they could be nicer about it.”

Pabbi only smiles. “Would you like to visit your mother? She’s asking after you.”

Everything in Loki’s being seizes up, hope igniting in him. If he could see her he could apologize, could make amends. “Mamma is asking about me?”

“Your mother has been hard at work healing two Midgardians very dear to your brother, who were wounded most grievously during a mighty battle on Midgard.”

Thor had spoken a name – _Titan_. The being who had hurt Loki, had made him sick. Had Loki been fighting him too, on Midgard? Had he been taken? Was that why he could not be healed?

His father can see who he is down at the heart of him, can read his feelings and intentions. Pabbi’s gaze makes Loki feel brittle, small, easily broken, because in it are words he doesn’t want to hear, emotions he doesn’t want to feel.

Pabbi saves him from the asking of it by taking his hand. “Come, my boy,” he says, and guides him out of the Hall.

 

.

The Healing Halls of Asgard were renowned throughout the nine realms, and the Ladies of the Hall even more so.

The story went that Eir had been a Valkyrie in the before-time, the most ruthless and violent of the maiden warriors. It was during the Battle of Bråvalla that her ruthlessness turned savage, and in her berserker rage she tore through the very fabric of the world. Yggdrasil caught her, molded her and shaped her, and spit her out into the being Loki has always known – Healer Eir, the Lady in White, who was quite mad and spoke only in riddles, but who could cure even the most grievous of injuries.

Eir fascinates Loki. He is young in his seidr but even he can feel the power of her enchantments, her spells and sorcery. He can feel her before they even enter the Healing Halls, a balm on his own weary heart. He feels lighter than he has since he awoke in this terrifying new world, though he knows not if it’s Eir’s enchantments or his mother, standing outside the door leading into the innermost sanctum, holding out her arms. All at once the barrier between them floods free and he can feel Allmother once more at the center of his being, where she has and would always be.

He races to her and collapses into her embrace. Mamma holds him, his body and his mind and his soul, his answered love for her so great that he can barely contain it. Her calm sings inside of him, tender as the arms wrapped around him. “My dear Loki,” she whispers to his ear, holding him to her chest as if he had never parted from her, as if the last two days of distance had never been. “I’m so sorry I have not been to see you. My time has been consumed with the heavy task laid before me. Nothing could have kept me from you for anything but life and death.”

“I missed you so, Mamma,” he whispers, and she strokes her fingers gently through his hair, her cheek pressed to his forehead, her lips at his temple. “I thought you were angry with me, that you – that you did not want to see me. I was going to write a play for you, to ask your forgiveness.”

“While I have always enjoyed your plays, my love, I am not angry.” She tugs him up enough to meet her gaze, affectionate as it has always been. She, even moreso than Pabbi, has changed – her eyes are lined, her golden hair streaked through with a regal and beautiful gray that makes the health of her cheeks, the glow of her eyes, that much more stunning. It is in those small lines and wrinkles that he truly sees the stretch of time around him. It is awful, that he should have missed so much time with his mother, who he loves more than anything and anyone. She feels his pain and replies with an answered love, as delicate as a bird and strong as an ox, firm and unyielding and resplendent and _everything_. He dashes his wrist over his cheeks and smiles when she helps him, drying his face gently with the wrap around her shoulders. “You are my beloved, tender-hearted, mischievous and joyful child. I could never be parted from you, Loki.”

Loki knows it to be true, even though he can sense her grief through the seidr, the same grief in Pabbi’s eye, in Thor’s trembling smile. He can feel her joy, too, that he is with her again, and he hugs her tightly, kisses her cheek one, two, three times, until the sadness in her eyes fades into laughter. Pabbi is smiling, too, and takes Mamma’s hand gently in his own, kissing the back of it as is their way. They speak a thousand words with a glance, but when Mamma’s eyes find Loki’s again they are shining, mysterious and deep as they always are, and so full of love that his chest aches with it. “Would you enter with me?”

“Yes,” he says, without hesitation. “I met a large and solemn Midgardian, and am curious to meet more.”

“They are very ill, my child,” she says, cupping his cheek. “It may be overwhelming. Are you certain?”

He is, and she knows he is. She smiles at him and Loki feels brave, and fearless.

He is glad for her hand when she opens the heavy door. All at once he understands the separation between them these last painful days has not been Mamma’s doing, because when the door opens, the magic almost overwhelms him. His mother’s hold is all that keeps him from flinching away and turning to run. He’s never felt so many enchantments at once, spellwork and sorcery and runes working in tandem. Mamma’s touch grounds him, for all that her seidr feels hesitant and careful brushing against his, and she easily keeps the green sparks from catching at his fingertips and traveling up his arms. He gulps and she smiles down at him, encouraging and gentle, and guides him forward with her.

There are two figures eclipsed with golden light, not unlike when Pabbi enters the Odin Sleep. But Pabbi’s chamber is always calm, the enchantments warm to the touch, quiet and humming. The enchantments over the two figures are anything but. Seidr races over each of them, knitting and working together in a complicated patchwork of light Loki could never hope to understand. The Midgardians are in the white tunics of the sick - a younger man, his hair a shock of blond, his eyes bruised and sunken deep for all that he is heavily asleep, and an older man with thinning hair and strong features. Loki has a terrible, disorienting moment where he thinks he knows him – knows, suddenly, that he is strong and brave and competent in a way only battle-hardened warriors could ever be, and that he loves him beyond reckoning, beyond words, a deep and unshakable caring that seems anchored into the pit of his very being.

He comes back to himself with a sharp inhale, Mamma’s hand on his shoulder warm and firm.

How could he know this? How could he feel this love, this tug in his heart? Is it true, what he has long suspected – that he was on Midgard, that something happened to him there when he was a man grown, that he _knows_ these people? Only a catastrophe of world-shaking proportions could have made Pabbi consent to bringing the mortals here. Loki has never known any mortal to be allowed into the Healing Hall, let _alone_ the Soul Forge, and he wonders at Pabbi’s curious words, the respect in them when he spoke of the Midgardians and their development.

“Are they princes?” Loki whispers, close to his mother’s skirts.

She reaches down to gently stroke his hair. “No. They were grievously wounded because of Asgard’s actions, because we did not follow the right path and make the right choice, and in doing so doomed them to their deaths long before they were due. And so, we are righting a wrong.” She gazes into his eyes, into his very heart. “Do you think this was the right course of action?”

“Yes, of course! Their lives are not ours to meddle in. That is what Pabbi always says.”

Mamma looks at the Allfather over Loki’s head. “Yes, that is what Pabbi says. To right this wrong we brought them here, to the Healing Halls, and have been working ever since to be sure of their survival. Would you like to speak to them?”

Loki swallows, chancing his own look up at Pabbi. He finds his father curiously silent, his gaze impenetrable. Loki will not find the answer there. “Yes, Mamma.”

Mamma smiles, and Loki knows he made the right choice.

The younger man is deeply asleep, his expression a grimace of pain, but the older man’s eyes open when Mamma approaches. The feeling of familiarity that overcomes Loki is so awful that his fingers tangle in Mamma’s dress despite himself, even as she sits at the man’s side and the golden halo of enchantments laid over him shifts with her, never touching her skin. Her gaze is warm as she takes the man’s hand, his knuckles big and scarred in her delicate embrace. “Dear Phillip, breathe easy. You have asked, and now I provide you an answer.” Mamma closes her eyes for a moment, and Loki thinks that maybe Fate has caught her in its tangled web, because her eyes are very far away when they open. “This is my little boy, Loki.”

The man, Phillip, swallows. His eyes dart to Loki, and Loki is horrified that there is fear in them. Perhaps he does not know where he is, or what has happened. Loki tucks himself into his mother’s side as close as he can get, shy and uncertain, but the pain of the man’s gaze hurts more than Loki thought it would. “It’s alright,” he whispers. “Mamma is the greatest healer in all of Asgard. Well, Eir is perhaps the greatest healer,” he amends, and Mamma sends him a rueful smile, “but Mamma is loving and caring and wonderful. She will make you feel better.”

Phillip licks his lips, cracked and dry. “She has,” he says. His voice is like dust, so thin and ragged that Loki can hardly hear him. The enchantments healing him reflect over his features, runes like fireworks on his pale skin. “Your mother has been very kind.”

“She is the Allmother,” Loki says helplessly – in the single word is everything that Mamma is and was and would always be. “You have nothing to fear now. You and your companion are in good hands.”

Phillip’s eyes move past Loki’s to the other platform, where the younger man sleeps. “He’s okay?”

“He sleeps deeply,” Mamma murmurs, as she reaches into the enchantments and gently wipes the sweat from Phillip’s brow with a sickcloth. “He will remember the torment of the last weeks, but the pain of it will be dulled, as if thinking back on a bad dream.”

“That’s good,” Phillip says, his eyes going hazy with exhaustion. “I can’t stand it. Knowing how much he suffered.”

Mamma’s eyes fill with unshed tears. “Sleep now, dear man. I will not leave your side.”

Loki leans his head at his mother’s shoulder, there where her golden hair smells strongest of honeysuckle. Phillip’s eyes slowly close, his breathing going even and quiet, and within seconds the patchwork of seidr begins to hum anew. “The other man, he is Phillip’s beloved?”

“He is.”

Loki chews on his lower lip. “Why is his healing different?”

“It was his mind that was wounded, dear one,” Mamma says, gently. “He was touched by the very same sickness that nearly took you from us.”

Pabbi stiffens, imperceptible, where he stands sentinel at the door, but Loki sees. Loki always sees.

“Will you have to make him a child like me?”

“No. His was but a touch, and muted through you,” Mamma replies, smiling her sad smile. “In time it will be safe to let them return home. Until then, I must remain here at their side.”

Before, he would have considered the wisdom of sharing this with his parents – he had to be strong and fearless, Protector of the Realm – but this was a whole new world and there is no one to protect, not anymore. Thor is a man grown and it is Loki who needs protection, until he comes into his seidr. Until it stops attacking him for keeping it bottled, for not knowing how to wield it.

He hates showing his weakness, but he finds in this he has no choice. Days might have been feasible, but weeks were not.

“You are the best healer, Mamma,” Loki says softly, flicking his eyes up to hers. “You always make me feel better.”

“Do you feel pain?” Mamma asks, and Pabbi steps away sharply from the door and comes around the beds where the Midgardians sleep.

“My seidr pain,” Loki says, ashamed and cringing under his father’s urgency. Pabbi takes his hand, spreads his fingers wide. The rune glows at his touch, brighter than Loki has seen before, and he realizes that the rune in the center of his palm is the first of many – that they rise up his arms and disappear under his tunic, but he can feel them still, tingling in his shoulders and down to the pain gathered low in his back. He flinches away from his father but Pabbi grips his hand tightly, his eye aglow with his own spell work.

“Oh,” Mamma says, low and mournful. “Oh, my child.”

Mamma reaches to where Pabbi holds his hand so tightly and gentles his hold. She folds Loki’s fingers in hers, green sparks answered by the darker shade of Mamma’s magic, and the pain begins to ease, a wave of relief so strong he can scarcely believe it. Loki didn’t realize how badly he had hurt until it recedes, and he sighs, leaning into his mother’s side heavily. “I tried to make it feel better, but I couldn’t by myself.”

“I didn’t remember. These days were so very long ago,” she tells Pabbi quietly, her voice thick with sorrow. She brushes her lips gently over Loki’s brow. “He has been master of his magic for so long that I’d forgotten the time before, when he couldn’t control his power.”

A master of magic? It is as Loki suspected, and he thinks he will feel a thrill of joy once the relief begins to fade, but right now he can only close his eyes and sigh there against Mamma’s shoulder, as she runs her fingers through his hair. “I tried to be brave,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“It is I who am sorry,” Mamma replies, and cups his cheek until he raises his head to meet her gaze. “Your seidr caused you pain. I remember some mornings you could scarcely leave your bed.”

“You always make me feel better, Mamma. You are the best healer in all the realms.”

“If only that were true,” Mamma murmurs, and kisses his forehead. “I will come to you tomorrow, so we might share our morning meal. Until then, I must continue my work here. Should the pain grow to be too much, ask your father to bring you back to me.”

“Yes, Mamma,” Loki whispers, and wraps his arms around her neck, hugging her as tightly as he can. She laughs softly, though he thinks perhaps she is crying too, but when he finally lets go her cheeks are warm, her smile bright, and she kisses his forehead, cradling his face in her hands.

 

.

After that, Loki’s days pass as if in a dream. He still trails Thor throughout his day, but he is so happy he feels like he’s floating on air. His Mamma loves him, his seidr pain is gone for now, and he met a _Midgardian_. No – he met _three_ Midgardians. They are as wonderful and brave as he had read in his books, and he can’t wait to tell Baldr and Braggi all about them. He decides he would very much like to visit Midgard one day, see their big cities and their ‘cars’, which Thor tells him are large, mechanical devices that took Midgardians and their children from place to place instantly. Such a feat seems unimaginable, and Thor regales him of all the Midgardian magic, which was not born of seidr but of something called ‘science’. Loki wishes to learn about this science, and he tells Thor so, but Thor just laughs and hoists him up to sit on his shoulders. It is not very princely at all but it’s fun, and Loki thinks that this must be what his father feels when he sits on Sleipnir, so tall he can see out across all the Nine Realms.

Loki’s good mood takes him through their evening meal together in the dining hall, and not even the Warriors Three can ruin it. Their dinner is kjötsúpa with crusty bread, one of Loki’s favorites. It’s delicious, and in Asgardian tradition they each tell a story as they eat. Where before all their stories were about witches and princesses and magic, now there are centuries of battles and wars to draw from.

Volstagg tells the tale of their first hunt as men, when Thor decided to take down one of the famed dragons of Muspelheim. He failed fourteen times (“Fourteen times! After the fifth we thought him mad. By the eighth we were all burnt and crispy. By the eleventh I almost threw him off a mountain.”) before bringing one down. “It was old and sickly and could only cough smoke,” Volstagg adds, to Loki’s helpless giggles.

Hogan tells one of the old stories of the Vanir-Asgard war, of a prince in love and a Vanir shieldmaiden who resisted every single one of his advances, thinking him a war-mongering brute. Realizing he had met the love of his life, the prince gained new respect for the plight for her people and her family. Understanding that he was in a position to stop the war, the prince offered himself for peace, if only she would agree to his hand in marriage and unite their two peoples forever. “Their wedding portrait still hangs in the Great Hall,” Hogun adds, and Loki realizes that the story was about his _parents_.

Finally, it is Fandral’s turn. Truthfully, Thor had always insisted that they save Fandral for last because Fandral was the best of them at storytelling, so it’s no great surprise that the tradition continued into their adult lives.

“It was a dark night in the deepest of winter, when we arrived on Alfheim,” Fandral intones. “We had been called to aid the Allfather in what we thought was a rebellion, though we had only just been given our vambraces the season before.”

“ _You_ had only just been given your vambraces, thank you,” Volstagg says, rolling his eyes. “It was like dragging around pups not yet grown into their paws.”

“These were the days before your brother came to wield his mighty hammer,” Fandral tells Loki. “He was like a young wolf, pawing at the earth, nervous with excitement for his first bout. All of us were, without realizing that the glory we thirsted for would not be found that day.”

Thor’s smile, which had been bright on his face, begins to dim. “That was indeed a day of much bloodshed. Perhaps a different tale, Fandral.”

“Little did we know that we would fight our first battle on the cold snowy banks of the River Retlhyn.” Loki is sure he takes a big bite of his chicken, a swallow of mead, purely for the dramatic pause. “We were young, untested – alright, all of us except Volstagg,” he says, rolling his eyes when Volstagg glares at him. “Our vision of what battle would be was steeped in the stories we’d heard around campfires, the old guard speaking of wars and battles fought. We thought we had an idea of what we were stepping into.

“Heimdall left us as far away from the heart of the battle as he could, but not far enough. When at last the golden light of the Bifrost faded from our vision, we stood in the middle of pure chaos and pandemonium.” Fandral’s eyes get far away, staring just beyond Volstagg’s shoulder. “The snow was painted red with blood. We could hear nothing but the clang of swords, the roar of the wind, the bellowing of men dying. The frost giants, using Alfheim’s civil war as a cover, had invaded, and it was there on that snowy riverbank that we met our first frost giant, one so large it seemed to blot out the cold and tepid sun.”

Thor abruptly stands, so fast that his chair falls backwards with a crash. The Warriors Three jump to their feet as well, hands at their hilts, looking about for an unseen foe. It is not until Thor says, “This is not a suitable tale,” that Loki realizes there is no foe – that Thor has leapt to his feet, furious, at the _story._

The Warriors Three stare at him as if he’s lost his mind. There is so much seidr in the room Loki feels as if he’s drowning in it, and his own magic snaps and crackles between his fingers, a paltry response to Thor’s anger. Thunder rumbles outside, and Loki blinks as he stares out the window. The sky had been clear just moments ago, the mother star setting low.

“Thor, it’s just a story,” Volstagg says, holding his hand out across the table, the other over Fandral’s chest. “These were the events as they happened.”

“We have been granted the most precious and elusive of all gifts – a second chance. You will _not_ fill him with fear and self-loathing, _again_.” Thunder booms outside and Loki realizes – Loki realizes it’s  _his brother_ , that _Thor has seidr,_ and he stares up at him, stunned by this sudden turn of events, by Thor’s anger and Volstagg’s pain and Fandral’s embarrassment and Hogun’s judgement. “Have you not learned your lesson? _Have not I?_ ”

“My prince,” Fandral says softly, his face bright red, and leaves without another word.

Volstagg stares after him before heaving a long, low sigh, setting his napkin down. “Apologies, Thor.”

“I value our friendship, so I ask that you leave me,” Thor replies through gritted teeth, and Volstagg and Hogun both bow and make their retreat.

It is only after the heavy door has closed that Thor collapses to his seat, head in his hands. Outside, the storm clouds dissipate as if they never were, and now – now Loki understands why Thor talks to the grain master so much, why he is the Master of Stores.

“You can make it rain,” he breathes.

“Of all that just occurred, only _you_ would remark on that,” Thor answers, but lifts his head to look at him. “Indeed I can brother, but it is fickle and responds only half the time.”

“Except when you’re angry.”

“Except when I’m angry,” Thor replies, and sighs. “Ask, then.”

“That I should be defending him is revolting, but Thor – Fandral was only telling us a story about the monster he slew, not challenging anyone’s honor.”

“No,” Thor says, quietly. Loki knows his brother’s temper is like smoke – quick to darken, quick to dissipate – but the man sitting beside him has never resembled Loki’s brother _less_. The weight of the crown he wears rounds his broad shoulders. Exhaustion paints the furrow at his brow, the grief at his mouth, and Loki – Loki wishes he were still Thor’s Protector, that he could still make him laugh with a word or a joke, that he could keep Thor safe. His brother has seen battle, has taken lives, has been to war and fought evils Loki could scarcely dream of. His brother has seen darkness and it has touched him, _changed_ him, as much as Thor tries to hide it with his natural cheerfulness and joy.

His brother is a stranger, and Loki has never felt so helpless, so alone, or so afraid.

“It has taken longer than I care to admit, to accept my place in Asgard,” Thor begins, quietly. “I wanted the throne, once. I had grand dreams of what it would be like – you at my side as my chief advisor, the Warrior’s Three at our backs as our war council, Sif wearing the crown of a queen. I thought that to be king was nothing but war games and feasts, quests for my lady love and grand adventures.” He snorts, shakes his head. “I was a fool. Over the past few years I’ve finally come to understand my place in the cosmos, Loki, to accept the position I will hold in these Nine Realms, to recognize the magnitude of my responsibility. It is for that reason that I decided it was time to open diplomatic talks with Jotunheim.”

Jotunheim? The realm of the frost giants, monsters of the most grievous and terrifying fury? “ _Why_?”

Thor smiles his sad smile. “For more reasons that I can articulate. Father and I argued for many months – argue still. Not because we disagreed that the time had come to offer mercy to the Jotnar, but because we disagreed on what that mercy should entail.”

Loki can scarcely believe what he’s hearing. His brother, the boy he played with in the orchard, the boy who dreamed of using Mjolnir to one day destroy all the monsters of Jotunheim, sitting before him speaking of mercy. “What did you do? Did…did you give them aid?”

“I gave them back the heart of their world.”

Loki sucks in a sharp breath. The Casket of Ancient Winters was a jewel, and it had a place of special honor in Pabbi’s Vault. It was the key to Jotunheim’s existence, yes, but with it… “They will surely attack us now!”

“It will take many years before the Casket can be used for anything but healing the planet of a thousand years of suffering,” Thor replies softly. “In that time I will show them friendship, and try to undo what I fear cannot be undone. Our people call them monsters, but to say that they are mindless beings fit only to be slain is a falsehood. Once, they had a culture as complex as ours, and their royalty married into the Houses of all the Realms.”

It is so hard to think of the frost giants, mindless and red-eyed and _violent_ , as anything other than the savage beasts they had shown themselves to be. “How do you know this?”

“I have studied their history,” Thor says. “I had reason to.”

“Is that why you got angry at Fandral?”

Pain slashes across Thor’s face like a knife wound. “I love my friends dearly, but that a dishonorable thing we did in our ignorant youth should be a mealtime story was not something I could abide.”

“What did you do, Thor?”

Thor shakes his head, pressing his lips tightly together. “We – we killed a Jotun named Naglfari, mated consort to Alfheim’s crown prince, Audr.”

Loki stares at his brother. “That’s not true.”

Thor squeezes his hand gently, his gaze distant as if looking back at the young man he was and finding him wanting. His mouth twists with loathing and grief. “We were children who snuck into a battle we had no business fighting. We attacked because we saw frost giants, which to our feeble and idiotic minds equated ‘foe’. You were the smartest of us and recognized who he was, though he had no mark of his station or crown at his temple. You tried to stop us, as you always did, but I was a fool. Naglfari defended himself, frightened for the safety of his babe, and we took it as signal to attack.”

“He had a child?”

“Naglfari was with child, Loki. The Jotnar are not as we are, in the ways of men and women – they can sire children as well as carry them. We did not know at the time, though I have often wondered if that would have stayed my hand.”

Thor bows his head, staring down at Loki’s hand cradled in his. Loki can barely keep up with his words, caught in a revolving loop around what Thor is saying – that the Jotnar are Other, just like Loki is. Mamma had always said that his personhood was normal, that it was just another form of being, that there were so many people in the Realms like him, but he never – to hear the evidence of it, to know it as truth, makes him feel lightheaded.

Thor must know. He must know Loki is...  that he... but if he _does_ he doesn’t say it, and Loki doesn’t know whether to be grateful or not. He bows his head too, over their hands.

“We took his life,” Thor says, his words shredded and awful, “and the life of a helpless babe, because we were ignorant fools trying to prove ourselves worthy. Because we saw them only as monsters. The Jotnar were on Alfheim because Naglfari called for their aid to quash the rebellion, to help his spouse’s cause and save his family – the most honorable of reasons to take up a blade. And instead of saving them, I single-handedly took Prince Audr’s family from him. And afterwards, I felt not a hint of remorse for what I had done. I called them monsters, but it was I, Loki, who was the monster.”

Thor wouldn’t do that. Thor wouldn’t kill a being trying to shield itself and its young. Not his brother, the boy who had once nursed a trio of kittens back to health after finding their mother dead, who wept when the tiny runt of the litter died where it lay in his lap, no longer suckling at its bottle of milk. Loki stares down at the table, unseeing.

Thor gently tips his chin up until their gazes meet. His eyes are red-rimmed and awful, so full of sorrow that it breaks Loki’s heart anew. “Do you think Naglfari deserved such a fate? Simply for the color of his skin, the shape of his body, the color of his eyes?”

“ _No_.”

“Do you think, then, that Jotunheim deserved such a fate as it got? Because it isn’t just one babe that has died in their mother’s womb on Jotunheim, Loki. There is no food, no clean water, no sunlight. A world with millions of people, dying a slow death.”

Loki’s heart is breaking thinking of something so awful, so many people starving, so many children who had died because of something that Pabbi had done. Pabbi would never – but of course he did, _he had_ , Loki had seen the Casket with his own two eyes. “But the Casket is back now,” he says, his voice thick. “You returned it. You made it right.”

“Yes,” Thor replies gently, “but that does not hope to make up for the generations of Jotnar who never gave their intellect, their thoughts and ideas and dreams, in service of their realm and all the Nine.”

Thor’s shoulders are drawn low by the weight of this horror, and Loki understands now why his brother seems so old sometimes, old before his time. “I don’t tell you these things to make you angry at Father. He is king and did what he thought was right. The Jotnar made war by invading Midgard, and we protected the mortal realm as we have always done, and punished the Jotnar for their actions. Only we never _stopped_ punishing them, or showed them mercy. The Jotnar were our enemy for so long that we forgot they could be anything else.” Thor squeezes his hand. “It is only in Father’s actions that we can grow as leaders ourselves and learn from the mistakes he made.”

“That’s what Mamma says,” Loki say, chin trembling. “That sometimes we make mistakes, and have to learn from them so we won’t make them again.”

“Just so.”

“Do you think the Jotnar will forgive us?”

“I think – I think there are things that cannot be forgiven,” Thor replies, and silently begins to weep. It is not something he ever thought he’d see Thor do, so strong and proud, but the red of his eyes spills over down into his beard, and in that moment he is Loki’s brother once more, holding that tiny dead kitten and sobbing, begging Loki to make better what cannot be unmade. It is the worst thing in a conversation filled with worst things, and Loki wants to wrap his arms around Thor’s neck and never let go. “I hope – I hope that in my actions I have at least righted a wrong, and that the children of Jotunheim will have a chance at a life that their mothers did not.”

“You did,” Loki says, as certain and sure as he has ever been. “I’m so proud of you. You did a wonderful thing, Thor. I think that the other me, the older me, was proud too.”

Thor ducks his head, as if Loki won’t see the heart he has always worn on his sleeve. It’s an easy thing to give in to his impulse, to fold himself around Thor’s broad shoulders and hug him tightly, to settle his cheek there against the bristles of Thor’s beard and breathe in the scent of him, familiar and warm. His hand is heavy on Loki’s back where he holds him near, and when Loki straightens and smiles, Thor meets his gaze heavy with sorrow. “Pabbi has been saying for a while now that it is time I take on more princely duties.”

Thor smiles through his grief, running his hand gently through Loki’s curly mop. “Has he, little one?”

Loki nods. “Though I am wary of what you say, that the Jotnar will not attack us, for good or for ill you have opened peace talks by returning the Casket to their people. Your deed was altruistic and kind-hearted, but what good is altruism if they still yet starve?”

“What do you propose?”

“I’ve been following you for days now as you met with the crop masters. There is enough siloed grain to feed a population three times the size of Asgard, with this year’s harvest set to double that amount with your hard work and your _rain_ – don’t think you’re going to get out of telling me about that, by the way,” Loki says with a shake of his head.

“You propose to give them grain?”

“I don’t even know if they eat bread, because it stands to reason that the Jotnar eat different things due to their climate. Still, it’s worth considering. Pabbi couldn’t say no, not in the face of a lasting peace with one of the Nine he’s sworn to protect.”

That makes his brother laugh, so big his entire face lights up, while somehow making his grief that much worse. He gathers Loki to him, hugging him so tightly Loki’s ribs creak, and when Loki screeches and smacks him on the shoulder he laughs even harder and hoists him up like a sack of flour. “Just when I thought I’d lost you forever,” Thor says, smiling from ear to ear. “I don’t think they eat bread, but you know, I never thought to ask. It’s likely that even if they don’t, we have other resources to share with them. We should write down our thoughts and ask the scholars tomorrow, what do you think?”

“Yes,” Loki says, and imperiously points to the door from his extremely undignified perch at Thor’s hip. “Lead on, faithful steed, and get me a pen.”

He and Thor spend the rest of the evening in Thor’s study, coming up with viable plans to provide humanitarian aid to the Jotnar without taxing Asgard’s supply and Pabbi’s goodwill.

He realizes that the good feeling inside of him is _purpose_ , and for the first time since he opened his eyes here in this brave new world, no longer feels so unmoored.

 

.

That it is one of Thor’s journals he has stolen is important to him.

The cover is worked leather, with the crest of the House of Odin embossed on the rich brown. The pages within are so fresh that they crinkle when he opens them, and the _smell_ – Loki loves new journals. They had just been _sitting there_ on the corner of his desk, a whole pile of them, brand new and unused. They were the same journals Pabbi had used all his life, housed in long rows behind the big desk in his study. That Pabbi expected Thor to continue this tradition, and that Thor was digging in his heels, was all par for the course, and so Loki hadn’t felt even a twinge in relieving him of one.

When he’d woken in his brave new world the first thing he’d looked for were his treasures in the hidden place, the small nook he had carved out under a floorboard in his corner of the nursery. In the Before Time it had been his trove for all that he stole, from jewelry to books to a visiting Duke’s stupid helm, encrusted with fake rubies and smelling of cheap hair pomade. Now it is empty, save for one of the threads from Mamma’s shawl, a paperweight from Pabbi’s office that he’d liked, and now, his new journal.

Loki has always been able to see very well in the dark, a gift which has done him great service over the years. He crawls under the frame of his bed with his pillow and his blanket, and angles his new journal until the light of the moons shining in from the window illuminate the pages. He licks the tip of his pen, and opens his journal to the first page.

_As I cannot refrence journals that I no longer have, I must start fresh, which is a wund far more painfule than I expected. Still, the worries of my life in the Before Time are very diferent than the burdons I must carry now, and so it is not such a bad thing to begin anew. My entire life has begun anew._

He stops, staring down at his curly script, and has a moment of indecision. To write his innermost thoughts and feelings down feels like – like spitting in the face of his parents’ grief, but how can he _not_? How can he keep this bottled up inside himself? Already he feels a relief inside, knowing that though he cannot speak a word of this to anyone, he can at least put it to paper and get it out of his head.

_I am Loki, Prince of Asgard. I have seen nine passes of the stars. I am out of my time, and an imposter._

 

.

It takes a week before Thor’s temper has cooled enough that his idiot friends chance coming to the dining hall for breakfast. The last days had been absurdly peaceful, just the two of them, but Loki knew their newfound solitude could not last.

The three of them stand when they arrive, but just as Loki knew he would, Thor waves whatever they were going to say away, forgiveness in his smile.

Loki doesn’t know why it took him so long to understand this, but last night while writing in his new journal Loki came to the realization that the nursery is now a part of Thor’s Hall, in expectance of children he will have with his future queen. The Warriors Three live here with their own families as part of his household, because Thor is crown prince and goes on state trips and gives back frost giants their treasured possessions.

Loki had been lamenting his own weakened position for days now, when he _should_ have been marveling at the strength of his brother’s. He hadn’t backed down from his companions last night because Thor was becoming Allfather in his own right. The thought is both amazing and terrifying, and Loki feels that strange tugging pull of his seidr, but he ignores it as best as he can and decides that he would _use_ this new and wonderful position to order his brother’s idiot friends to do his bidding.

“We are planning an aid mission to Jotunheim,” he declares, and enjoys Volstagg’s shock, Fandral’s confusion, Hogun’s passive non-expression that nevertheless shows his surprise. There is a lady with them today in resplendent dark blue leathers, her unusual dark hair in tendrils, staring in a very unladylike manner. Thor grins down at him and Loki smiles back, before slapping the parchment down on the table and climbing up onto the bench. A servant helpfully left a cushion, and Loki clambers onto it so at least he is of a height with Thor’s shoulder, not so small that the table comes up to his chin. He reaches for the raspberry juice, which he has to grab with both hands, and Volstagg swallows the disgusting mouthful of gruel he’d been showing the world. “What?”

“An aid mission,” Thor replies calmly, as he pours juice into his own cup, reaches for the sweetbreads. “I told Loki of my work in Jotunheim last night, and we decided that we had more to offer than just the Casket.”

Fandral rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I’m very sorry for my hand in this, but I must say that of all the ideas you’ve had in recent years, many of which were truly breathtaking in their absurdity, this is perhaps your most questionable.”

“Thor,” the lady says, and she darts her gaze from Loki to Thor and back again. “We haven’t had a chance to speak yet, Loki. It is I, Sif.”

She is as stunningly beautiful as Loki always knew she would be, much more beautiful than all of them combined. That her hair is dark now instead of the blond ringlets of her youth does nothing to detract from her beauty. Despite the loveliness of her face her expression is stiff, for all that she tries to smile. Her eyes track him with a mistrust she can’t hide, and Loki shrinks under her gaze, because in her eyes is a sincere and honest _dislike_ that hasn’t changed since he saw her last, tiny and waif-like and intent on being a warrior. After Volstagg had – after the Rainbow Bridge, after he had finally been able to leave Mamma’s rooms and go back to the nursery, she had come to him and screamed at him for dishonoring her. She called him _ergi,_ and whatever bond of friendship he had been trying to build with her had gone up in smoke.

She has clearly become the warrior she always wanted to be. And just as clearly, she had never grown to love him as friends love one another. Her dislike of him is so clear that he stares down into his juice so he doesn’t have to meet her gaze.

“You press your father’s hand,” she says.

“I do,” Thor replies, sure of himself, for all that he is tense at Loki’s side. “If what Father says is true – that this was the moment that things took a turn – I refuse to let the poison consume him again. I will not hide from him, not anymore, not when we know what came of it.”

“Thor,” Lady Sif says again, but behind them the great doors open, and Mamma comes in.

All of the warriors stand again, even the Lady Sif, but Loki can’t help himself – he clambers down from the bench and runs to his mother, and she crouches down to meet his embrace, folding him gently into her arms.

At her touch the pain that had begun to nag at his senses eases, and he buries his face there at her neck, hugging her tightly for long moments. When finally he pulls back Mamma is smiling at him, but Loki can tell that she is exhausted. Her face is lined with worry, and her gown is not crisp and neat as it usually is. It is clear she has spent many hours in the Healing Halls, and is taking a rest. As she approaches the long table all the warriors bow their heads in respectful greeting.

Thor offers a smile, a “Mother,” as he gently brushes a kiss at her cheek. “Pardon my rudeness, but you look tired.”

“Healing is hard work, though I thank all the Norns that it finally appears Clinton’s mending has turned the corner, after these long months.”

“He fares better?”

“His breathing is calmer. I’ve extracted as much of the poison as I could, and now it’s just a matter of knitting the wounds in his mind closed,” Mamma says, before she blinks at them all, as if only just realizing they’re eating together. “Forgive me, I do not wish to interrupt your morning meal.”

“No, my lady, we were just finishing,” Lady Sif says, and Volstagg makes some sound that Fandral quickly quiets with an elbow to the ribs. “We’ll leave you and your sons to your breakfast.”

The warriors make quick work in leaving, though Volstagg looks longingly at the bacon he left on his plate. Loki doesn’t know what it says about him to get a mean kind of satisfaction at heaping a pile of bacon onto his own plate, never breaking eye-contact with Volstagg until the door to the Hall shuts between them. Thor snorts at him and steals some for his own plate, under Mamma’s amused eye.

There is a friendly and loving quiet between them as they tuck into their food, so comfortable and _right_ and Loki loves it, loves it when Mamma helps him spread jam on his scone, loves it when Thor gets butter in his beard and Mamma rolls her eyes and reaches over Loki to wipe it with her napkin. It is very different from Pabbi, who is always so serious – and just thinking of Pabbi, of all Loki had learned last night, makes a funny ache settle in his belly. He looks up at his mother only to find Mamma already gazing at him. “Thor told me about the Casket of Ancient Winters.”

“Did he, my love?”

“That was a very brave thing to do.”

“It was,” Mamma agrees, brushing the backs of her fingers lightly along his jaw, though her smile is for Thor alone. “Your brother is a very fine and brave man.”

“He is.” Loki glances up at his brother only to find Thor’s eyes averted, his cheeks pinked. He smiles, too. “He told me of the conditions that they have lived under, and I want to – Mamma, I want to do something for the Jotnar, to help them as Thor has helped them. Is that alright?”

Mamma looks at Thor over Loki’s head, but like Pabbi, their exchange says much without a single word uttered. “Yes, darling, that’s alright. I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

“Do you think Pabbi will be mad?”

“I don’t think your father will be angry. Rather the opposite.”

“He said I must act more like a prince, and less like a child.” His mother goes still, and Loki shakes his head. “In the Before Time, when Thor was a boy like me. That was when he made me Protector.”

Mamma closes her eyes for long moments, long enough that Loki knows the threads of fate have snagged in her mind’s eye. He thinks to touch her and bring her back to this moment, but then her eyes open and she is gazing at him with so much love he squirms under it. “You were – and remain – an _exceptional_ Protector, Loki.”

Loki is so proud he can barely speak. “I think the older Loki did a good job, to have helped Thor become the man he is.”

“You did a very good job,” Mamma says, cradling Loki’s cheeks and kissing his forehead softly. “I love you.”

“I love you Mamma,” Loki whispers, and when he looks at Thor, just a little from the corner of his eye, he finds his brother with chin in hand, gazing at them with all the love in his heart out for the world to see.

 

.

This is the pattern that follows for weeks afterward. Loki and Thor take breakfast with the Warrior’s Three and Lady Sif. Afterward, Thor attends to his duties, or tutors the newest recruits to the Einherjar in the training yard, while Loki sits with Pabbi in his study and gets to read some of Pabbi’s most treasured books while Pabbi works. (To date, his favorite has been one of Midgardian magic from a nobleman named Galileo Galilei, who had rediscovered the Rules of Runes and called them _Laws of Physics_. Midgardians were indeed very clever creatures.) By early afternoon Thor comes to find him, they eat a light meal, and then they retire to Thor’s study to work on their plan to aid Jotunheim, the plan they hope to bring before their father in a month’s time, at the next Council. Afterwards they take a walk, or Thor will continue his lessons in teaching Loki to ride a horse, or they’ll go see Mamma in the Healing Halls, where the Midgardians are almost healed.

Thor calls the older man _the Son of Coul_ , and speaks to him with such deference that Loki knows he must indeed be a powerful leader of the Midgardians to garner such respect from his brother. The Son of Coul is kind to Loki as well, though not with the same easy camaraderie he shares with Thor. Loki feels as if the man never takes his eyes off him, though Loki hasn’t been able to catch his gaze on him even once.

The Son of Coul is not the first to have looked at Loki and been suspicious of him. So many are, though Loki has never been able to understand why. He’d only ever asked his teacher once, and Skildir had turned to him and said, _Of course people are suspicious of you. We can all see your wickedness as easily as the nose on your face._

Skildir, for all his faults, had been right. People saw Loki for what he was, even when he tried to be good. It is no great surprise that the Son of Coul, as respected and admired as he is, would see Loki’s wickedness too, especially after what Mamma said – that there was a great battle on Midgard, that whatever illness had consumed Loki had spilled over into those nearest him. Had spilled over into the Son of Coul’s beloved, the blond man who had slept many months without waking, his eyes dark bruises in his face.

Loki doesn’t get near the Son of Coul’s beloved, as a show of his own respect, but it doesn’t stop those eyes from following him.

It is a comfortable pattern, for all that it is nothing Loki is used to. He recognizes his brother most of the time in the man at his side, his humor and good cheer. Other times, when Loki watches him train, first with the Einherjar and then the Warrior’s Three, Loki doesn’t recognize his brother at all. They call him _Thunderer_ , and the first time Loki sees that power on display his joints go liquid with a deep, inborn terror he doesn’t understand. His brother is powerful to a degree Loki could never have imagined the blond boy with too-big teeth and a quick smile to ever become, so powerful that not even the Warrior’s Three and Lady Sif can best him together, so powerful that when he really lets loose Loki understands why the training grounds have been so heavily warded.

Loki will never be so strong, or so powerful. He is thin in a way he knows he will never grow out of. He will never have the broad shoulders his brother has, the bulging arms and powerful legs, the brute strength to use Mjolnir as she was meant to be used. Not for the first time he wonders at the man he became, the man his brother had so clearly loved, the man he has seen on the ceiling of the Great Hall, a slender green figure next to the gold light of his family. What use had he been, if Thor had seidr too? Had his brother become this powerful out of need, because Loki could not protect him as he had been tasked to do by Allfather? Or had Mamma been right – had his Otherness been a sign of the great seidmadr he would become?

What, then, of the certainty when he woke in this terrifying new world, that he had done something awful?

He watches his brother laugh as he rains down lightning on the Warrior’s Three and shivers.

 

.

That night, he and Thor share their evening meal with Mamma and Pabbi. It is the first night they’ve been invited to Pabbi’s high table since Loki woke up on the floor in the Great Hall, for though they sometimes breakfasted with him, by the evening Pabbi was often so behind in all the work it took in the running of Asgard that he wouldn’t eat supper until very late. Tonight, Pabbi had set those duties aside to dine with his family, and Loki is at once very nervous and extraordinarily pleased. It is rare indeed to have both his mother and father together for a meal, and so when they enter Odin’s Hall, Loki’s heart leaps to see his parents at the window, holding hands high near their hearts and speaking quietly.

Mamma sees them first and smiles her soft smile, and though Pabbi is always very serious, Loki can tell he is just as pleased to see them when he gently guides Loki to the table.

As an additional treat, and perhaps in deference to the warm evening, they eat on Pabbi’s terrace, overlooking Asgard. The kitchens serve smørrebrød, with liver and veal, and crisp, cold lingonberry juice to drink. It is _delicious_ and Loki realizes that he is happy, listening to his mother and father, watching Thor serve himself at least four times because for once his exertions match his appetite.

The happiness couldn’t last. As always, Loki is the one to ruin it.

“Pabbi, can I ask you something?”

His father nods, pouring more juice for him. “Yes, my boy. What is it?”

“Can you help me find my rooms?”

“Your rooms?”

Loki nods, suddenly nervous, and twists his fingers in the napkin on his lap. “Only, Volstagg’s son told me that the older me enchanted them so that they could not be found.” He pauses, just a moment, torn over the wisdom of what he needs to ask for, but though Thor had always been the braver of them Loki had always leapt after his brother regardless. “Mamma said I was a great seidrmadr, and one day would be again, but to do so I must have access to the rooms I lived in as a man.”

“No.”

Of all the things he was expecting it was not the hardness of his father’s expression, the shortness of his reply. Loki blinks once, twice, and even Thor’s brow furrows. “Why not?”

“As king I owe no explanation, not even to my prince,” Pabbi says shortly, and Loki flinches. Mamma reaches out to her husband but Pabbi stands, setting down his own napkin near his plate. He has not finished eating. “As a father, I ask you that you not broach this subject again.”

“But – I only want to see his things, Pabbi. His books and – and his tools of magic. I wish to piece together who he was.”

It is the wrong thing to say. His father’s face is like glass, impermeable, as it only gets when he is truly angry. Cold. Distant. “Your rooms are lost to the dark spaces between the worlds. I know you are curious, and wish for your things, but as time goes on you will have new things, and as many books as you may want. Do as I ask and do not broach this subject again.”

Loki watches his father walk away through tears, and he stares down at his plate, the taste of their meal like ash in his mouth.

Skildir told him, once, that he ruined everything he touched. At the time it had hurt more than anything to hear his teacher say such a thing, but Loki has long come to recognize the old man’s wisdom. Everything he had said had come to pass.

Loki knows well enough that he overstepped sometimes, but it wasn’t because he wanted to hurt anyone, even if that was often the outcome. He never knew when to speak, or when to keep his peace. In this case, it was clear he shouldn’t have asked. He’d ruined their evening, the first meal he’d eaten with both his parents since he woke here.

Thor lets out a long, unsteady breath and follows their father. Loki hears Mamma’s soft sigh in the quiet of the terrace, and is ashamed.

She comes around the table to sit next to him, but even Mamma’s presence, the warmth of her hand at the back of his head, cannot touch the cold ball in Loki’s chest. He’s always been smart, perceptive, and observant. Too much so.

“Pabbi is very angry at me.”

Even as she says, “My child, that is not so,” Loki knows his mother is lying. He himself is a liar, and he recognizes it easily in others. “Your father is angry with the situation, angry at the suffering we have all experienced, angry at what he had to do to save your life, but my darling, he could never be angry with you.”

“Then why hide my rooms from me, Mamma? Why not try to help me piece together who I was, if he is not angry?” The knot in his throat makes him feel choked, like he has frogs inside and can’t swallow around them. “When I woke up and I was here, and Thor was grown and Pabbi’s hair was white, there were chains all over my body. There was metal in my mouth, choking me _._ You have told me I was ill, but is that true?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Mamma says so forcefully that Loki recognizes the truth of it, accepts it, even if he can’t make himself believe it. He hates knowing he is the cause for the tears that trace down her cheeks, even as she holds him so tightly, even as she brings his trembling body close to hers, cocooned in the circle of her arms. “Dear heart,” she whispers, lips at his brow. “I have loved you all our long lives. Please trust in me, Loki.”

Loki stares at Asgard laid out before them like a painting, the long line of trees kissing the ocean, the Rainbow Bridge glittering like a jewel as it met the Bifrost. The mother star is setting, turning the sky as gold as Asgard. “My illness was worse than the Son of Coul’s beloved?”

“Much, much worse,” Mamma murmurs, cupping his cheek and forcing him to look at her. “When Thor returned with you and we saw the extent of the damage to your mind, we knew that Eir would not be able to heal you. Your father, in his grief, refused to let you succumb to the madness he knew would take you from us.”

“But why won’t he show me my rooms, Mamma? Why is he so angry?”

“My child,” his mother says, with great gentleness and a grief Loki can’t stand to see on her lovely face. “In saving you, your father took your life from you. The man we knew as our son died the moment Odin pressed the runes into your skin.”

Chills race over his body. He feels as if he is wearing an imposter’s skin, as if his very bones are not his. “But I’m still here, Mamma. I’m alive.”

“Yes, you are here,” Mamma says, and her tears are awful, shaking things, for all that she tries to control her voice as she speaks. “But the man you became is gone, and with him centuries of a life lived and a family loved. You are alive, and here with us, but we grieve for the experiences you will never have, for the memories you will never share with us of the long lives we have had together. Do you understand?”

Loki stands so suddenly his chair scrapes backwards across the tile. “You and Pabbi and Thor, you look at me as if I am a ghost. Skildir said I would grow to be someone people hated, and I think he was right. I hid my rooms and people stare at me in the hallway and there is no love in their gazes. No one who would call me friend has come to speak to me, so I must only assume I had no friends. I am _different_ , I am _Other_ , and as no friends have come to speak to me neither have any who would love me in the way of men and women. Is that who I was, Mamma? A lonely, strange person, too powerful and too different, who went mad and could only be saved like this?”

Loki can barely speak, wrapping his arms around himself to hold himself together, even as Mamma stares at him in horror. She does not deny it, is not quick enough to say _no_ , and all Loki suspected he now knows to be true.

He crashes to the floor, sobbing.

Mamma steps around the table and kneels next to him. Though he recoils from her touch once, twice, Loki is a coward and not strong enough to pull away a third time.

 

.

That night, held in his mother’s arms in the warm security of her bed, Loki dreams of a terrible storm on a long, empty plain of desert. Rain is in his eyes, streaming down his neck and under his clothes, but that is second to this strange feeling, like he’s floating. Far below him his brother, wild-eyed and roaring with laughter, is fighting Fury’s warriors through a strange white maze. Loki knows what he’s fighting for. Just beyond he can see Mjolnir sitting like a princess from one of Thor’s books, awaiting her knight to save her. He wants to cheer but can’t – all he can do is look down the sight of his bow. _Do you want me to slow him down, sir, or are you sending in more guys for him to beat up?_

Phil is in his ear, steady as anything, but there’s a reason why he’s the head G-Man, why he’s got clearance that doesn’t technically exist – calm as shit, he says, _Wait, I want to see this_ and the staggering amount of competence and skill just _does_ it for him, because everyone actually stops – hopped-up Swede tearing through their encampment and all Phil has to say is _hold on_ and everyone _holds on_ and wow, yeah, he’s done for, but somehow ironically in a good way because _Phil is his_.

The Swede makes it to Excalihammer and tries to do what all of them have not-so-secretly tried in the past two days – pick it up. He doesn’t succeed, because of course he doesn’t, and Thor roars in agony.

A dark-haired man watches from beside Mjolnir, his eyes hooded with something unnamable. His hair is a long tangle around his face, his leathers ravaged as if he has been in a great war. His long-fingered hands are laced gently in front of him, and he watches Thor scream without emotion.

His mouth, a nightmare of black thread and blood, has been sewn shut.


	2. Chapter 2

The morning brings no relief.

He had never been prone to emotional outbursts, though like anyone he could be pushed to one in the right circumstances. When they happened he would feel a curious numbness for days afterward, as if his mind needed time to process the onslaught of emotions that had overwhelmed him, and then Thor would make him laugh and he would find his cheer again. That is not the case, this time. He remembers it all and comes awake crying, because though his mother denies all that he said last night, tells him, “You were always loved, my dear child,” Loki knows she is only trying to protect his feelings.

His mother holds him all the long day, sings to him with a tenderness that soothes the ramble of his thoughts. She should be in the Healing Hall, with Thor’s Midgardian friends, and when he tells her so she murmurs into his hair, “My child, you are more important than anything or anyone. To leave you now would be to leave my heart at your feet.”

It is a day away from the eyes who might seek him out and find him wanting, full of a peace Loki had not known he craved until he had it. None could enter the Allmother’s chambers without her express permission, and with the door closed, the curtains drawn, it is a world away from the chaos swirling around Loki’s head. They walk in her garden and eat at her table, and when night falls once more Mamma tucks him in beside her, until all that surrounds Loki is the scent of the flowers they had picked, the silk of her hair against his cheek, and the cool, soft sheets of her bed.

It is there, in the quietness of nighttime, that he is finally brave enough to speak.

“Will you tell me the truth if I ask, Mamma?”

She brushes her lips along his brow. “Yes.”

Loki stares at the canopy above them, the pearls and patterns in the cloth, the way the night shadows reflect along the silver threads until they almost glow. His mother has stitched runes into the cloth, though he doesn’t recognize them. “Does Thor know of my Otherness?”

Mamma doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Though I wish you would not call it so, dear heart, yes your brother knows.”

Embarrassment leaps into his throat. “When did he find out?”

“You were some years older than you are now. The two of you were practicing in the training yard when you came into your flowering.”

Loki closes his eyes, mortified for himself. “Oh.”

“He thought he struck you, that he’d hurt you. Truthfully, I think you thought the same. So scared was your brother that he lifted you up right off your feet and raced you to Eir, screaming for us all the while.” Mamma strokes her fingers gently through his hair. “That was when I sat your brother down and explained to him your personhood.”

Loki buries his face there at her throat. He can feel how hot he’s blushing against the coolness of her skin. “Was he mean to me afterwards?”

“Of course not. Once he understood that this was a perfectly normal and natural part of your development, he vowed that he would always protect you and keep you safe, that he would never let anyone hurt you.”

“He always wanted to be like one of the knights in his stories.”

Mamma’s smile is warm against his temple, where she kisses him once, twice, three times. “When you found out that he had vowed this to me, you smacked him on the head and challenged him to a duel. To this day I don’t think he’s ever accepted.”

His love for his brother is a warm and tender thing, deep in the heart of him, like a little sun tucked under the cage of his ribs. “Only because he knows I’d win.”

“Undoubtedly,” she hums softly.

“Mamma, do you think I’ll be strong in my seidr again?”

“You already are. We must teach you to channel it. Now that your teachers know what you are capable of, understand the way your mind works and the way your magic behaves, you will find your studies will progress very quickly.”

“My teachers?” A bolt of cold dread goes through him. Skildir is _dead_ , one of the chambermaids had told him so.

“Your father and I have been waiting for you to adjust to your life here with us, Loki, before sending away for them once more. Lady Groa resides here in Asgard and has already agreed to move back to the palace in service to you. Sir Ragnvaldr has been recalled from Vanaheim and will be here in the next few months, after he finishes his quarter at the university where he teaches. Each have something new to teach you, just as each have a specialty suited to you.”

Loki shivers in the dark. Everyone knew of Lady Groa, the most skilled volva in Asgard, who it was rumored had taught Allfather himself the mystic arts. But Sir Ragnvaldr? The best seidmadr in all the Nine Realms, the man who was so powerful he could duplicate himself into three exact simulacra, specters that could walk and talk independently of one another? “They were my teachers before?”

“For many years, yes.”

As if in response, his magic pulses along every nerve and vein, and he shivers. “I want to learn and become a great seidmadr.”

“I know you do,” Mamma says, a smile in her voice, as the cool white snow of her magic soothes his own. “And you will, my love. Though the time is not yet right.”

He clenches his eyes shut. The time was not right because of the way he’d behaved in his father’s hall – like a spoilt child, weeping and making a to-do because Pabbi told him no. “I’m very ashamed. I’m sorry for the way I shouted, for the words I said.”

“No, Loki. I’m sorry I wasn’t with you to soothe your fears these past weeks.”

Loki traces a fingertip along the embroidery of Mamma’s sheets, the red and green whirls a pattern Loki can’t identify. “You never answered me, Mamma. If I had friends.”

She sighs quietly, stroking her fingers through his hair. “No, you did not have many friends, but you have always been very picky about the ones you associate with. Those friends who were worthy of you were held in the highest esteem. You had no friends as close to you as your cousins.”

Mamma’s voice grows thick, and Loki suddenly knows why Baldr and Braggi have not come to see him. He wishes he could take the question back, that he could keep on thinking his cousins just didn’t want to see him. Some knowledge is best left unknown, but it’s too late. “It is my great sadness to tell you that your cousins passed away many years ago, when a terrible sickness came to Asgard.”

Loki squeezes his eyes shut, the lump in his throat unbearable, as grief tears him wide open.

That’s all this world is, sorrow upon sorrow upon sorrow, cleaving through to the marrow of him. Everything is different – Pabbi, and Thor, and Mamma too. But to know that his cousins did not avoid him, that they had died so long ago, was both a relief and a knife to his heart. “And my uncle?”

“Your uncle Villi still lives,” Mamma says softly, rubbing his back in slow, gentle waves up and down the length of his spine. “The death of his sons left him with a heartache that I fear he will take with him to his deathbed. He resides on Vanaheim at my family’s homestead, where he can be a grandfather to my niece’s children.”

Uncle Villi had been so full of life, so loud and boisterous – not unlike Thor was now. He laughed loudly and often, always had a treat tucked away in his sleeves for his sons and nephews, and was the only one outside of their small family who could get Pabbi to laugh until he was pink-cheeked.

To think of that joy snuffed out breaks Loki’s heart all over again.

 

.

Pabbi comes, as Loki knew he would.

The day had dawned sunny and bright, without a cloud in the sky, so he and Mamma had moved her loom to her portico, so they could take in the morning and the sun on their cheeks. Mamma’s gardens were in full bloom, bees buzzing from blossom to blossom, the air sweet with honeysuckle and lilac, and Loki had found himself a perfect spot, up in the boughs of the wildest thing in Mamma’s garden, an enormous juniper tree. Mamma said he’d planted it when he was a little older than he is now, and Loki knows this is true. The tree is twisted and wild and doesn’t make any sense to look at, but it draws Loki to it like a moth to a flame. He wants to plant its cousin here in Mamma’s garden, and she has already promised to show him the spot she thinks will be perfect.

He sees Pabbi from the corner of his eye, standing with Mamma at her loom. They’re speaking, too low for even Loki’s ears to hear. In the morning sunlight Pabbi’s hair is snow white, and Loki feels that awful lurch in his belly. What he has been thinking on for days now.

He will still be a boy when his mother and father pass away, and a young man when Thor comes to the kingship. When Thor passes away, Loki will be at the prime of his life.

He will be left alone, with centuries left to live.

“You are very thoughtful today, Loki.”

Pabbi stands at the trunk of the tree, looking up at him through the leaves. Even with his hands tucked behind his back, shoulders broad and strong, he looks like an old man. Loki bites his lower lip until it stops trembling, dashes a wrist over his eyes, and then hauls himself up further into the tree.

The bark bites into his palms, the leaves slap his cheeks, but he finds a suitable branch easily enough. He knows he’s being immature, that this was what Pabbi meant when he said Loki must act more like a prince and less like a child, but he can’t make himself come down.

Pabbi sighs from down below. Loki watches him come around the other side of the trunk, where the branches are low and strange and curled into one another. He is a dark splash of red and gold and white between the leaves.

“Well, if you insist,” he says, and then Pabbi, Odin Allfather, climbs the tree after him.

Loki’s mouth hangs wide open as Pabbi scales the branches far more quickly than anyone his age ought be able to. He’s spry, even in his royal silk robes, and when Loki catches a not insignificant look at his hosen he bursts into peals of laughter. Pabbi growls at him and Loki can’t _stop_ , not even when his father settles himself on the branch beneath his, visibly exasperated by the whole thing and arranging his robes around himself. “Think that funny, do you?”

“Yes,” Loki says, giggling despite himself, wet and awful as he swipes his wrist across his eyes again. If only the court could see his father now, climbing juniper trees in his wife’s garden.

The breeze rustles the branches in the trees, ruffling Loki’s short curls, which Mamma had refused to slick down. It’s quiet and peaceful with nothing but the sound of the leaves, and birds chirping, and the brook that bubbled through Mamma’s garden as it flowed on its merry way. Loki knows that it flows right into the town proper, feeding a wellspring in the center of the village that was well-known for its healing properties.

Pabbi seems to be content in his silence, and it’s enough to let his father into this little sanctuary of his. Pabbi doesn’t seem aggravated anymore, only pensive, his brow curved low over the bright blue of his eye. He has leaned back carefully against the trunk of the tree, threaded his fingers to lay over his stomach. In such calm repose one would think he climbed trees all the time. Perhaps he once did before duty took hold, when he was young and free to play with his brothers.

“Mamma told me about Baldr and Braggi,” Loki whispers, the grief a shard of glass in his chest. He bites his lower lip, hard, though even he can hear the catches of his breath. “And Uncle Villi.”

Pabbi hums softly, appropriate for Mamma’s garden and the peace here. “Your uncle wishes to see you. His health no longer allows him to travel the Bifrost, but we may travel to see him in Vanaheim before the year is out.”

The words are so like his father. The flash of anger surprises him, though the guilt and unbearable loneliness that follow do not. “They were my best friends.”

“They were very good boys,” Pabbi replies quietly. “Just like you, my son.”

“I’m not. I’m not good.”

“Who else but a good and honorable young man would be trying to find out if the Jotnar eat bread?”

Loki goes still. “You know what Thor and I are doing.”

“Your brother has much to say on the subject.” Pabbi looks up at him when Loki leans over the branch. “Rather, your brother has a lot to say on most subjects.”

“He becomes Allfather.”

“Is this what you have seen?”

Loki nods. Shakes his head. Shrugs. “I feel it. Sometimes, when we talk.”

“You were, and will one day again be, the most powerful sorcerer in all the Nine Realms.”

He knows this already, but to hear his father give it voice, to hear his father speak of the son he lost, hurts Loki all the worse. “You loved him. The older me.”

“I love you more than words could possibly express,” Pabbi says, as if it is a pillar of his world, a steadfast truth. Loki ducks back over the branch so his father won’t see what the words do to him, to hear them said so honestly, so frankly, when his father has rarely said the words to him at all. “Why do you want to see the rooms?”

He should have thought to explain, the day before. Perhaps then Pabbi would have understood why he asked at all. “I wanted to know the person he was. To see the things he held dear.”

“You speak of yourself strangely, my son.”

He stares out across Mamma’s garden, tugging a leaf from the branch above him. “Lady Hilda used to say that our lives are shaped by the people around us, the same way the strings on an instrument shape the music it makes. Everyone around me is an adult, Pabbi, and busy with adult things. Thor is crown prince with a household to run, the _Master of Stores,_ wielder of Mjolnir and your chief warrior. His idiot friends are warriors in their own right, and privy council to him. My cousins died,” and saying it makes the knot in his throat unbearable for long, long moments. “Even Lady Hilda has gone to Valhalla. I will never again be the son you knew, because the people who shaped him are not the same people who will shape me.”

Pabbi is curiously silent below him. It takes a while, longer perhaps than Loki would admit, to gather his courage enough to look over the side of the branch. What he sees has him sucking in a startled breath.

His father’s blue eye is rimmed with red, wet streaked down into his white beard.

He climbs down immediately, thankful for the wide branches and the strange way they twist and move together, and crawls into his father’s lap, wrapping his arms around his neck. He is rocked in his father’s embrace and Loki is no infant but he allows it, if only because Pabbi seems to need it so very badly. He presses his cheek to Loki’s head, his beard scratchy, the smell of him so familiar. His father’s sigh is shaky at best, and when he gruffly presses a kiss to Loki’s hair he squeezes his father just as tightly. “I’m sorry I upset you, Pabbi,” he whispers around the lump in his throat.  

“If there had been another way, I would have torn the Nine Realms apart to heal you. That I have been fortunate enough to have you returned to me is a gift I did not deserve,” Pabbi says, his hand heavy and warm along the back of Loki’s head. “You are right to say that you will never be the same as you once were, but the man I raised is in you. I see your passion, and your empathy, your good nature and your love for others. You carry so many doubts, even as a boy so small.”

“I’m _other_ ,” Loki says softly, burying his face on his father’s chest. “I always have been. I even think differently from Thor.”

“How so?”

“Thor is – Thor’s thoughts follow a linear path, one-two-three. The Warriors Three are the same, and Lady Sif. Even Baldr and Braggi were like that. But I’m not. I don’t think like that at all. If Thor thinks one-two-three, where first he will meet a merchant whose cart was burgled, and next he will hunt down and fight the braggard who burgled the cart, and finally he will save a maiden who the braggard kidnapped – I think first to save the maiden, have her act as bait so I can dispatch the braggard, and then together we steal the merchant’s cart to ride back to safety.”

His father bursts into laughter, and Loki can’t help giggling. “It would work,” he says, reaching up to dry his father’s cheek with his own small fingers. “People are too dismissive of maidens.”

“People are too dismissive in general,” his father replies, gazing at him with so much love Loki can’t help but smile back. “Your thoughts aren’t _other_ , Loki. Truth told, they are more like my own than I perhaps realized. Your plan is sound, I think I would do the same.”

“Even if you put the maiden in danger?”

“Maidens aren’t wilting flowers,” Pabbi reminds him. “Or would you think the Lady Sif likely to stand idly by while a braggard waved a sword at her?”

“Lady Sif is exceptional among maidens,” Loki argues, “but your rationale is sound.”

Pabbi smiles, and Loki lays his head back down there at his chest to listen to the strong beat of his heart. They are quiet for a time, listening to the breeze, the birds in the trees, the water as it trickled its way through Mamma’s garden. In one of the branches above a sparrow keeps flying back and forth, chirping at them as she guards her nest.

“There is much left that we must speak of, about the man you were,” Pabbi says, quietly. “Very soon, I will tell you everything you must know. For now, if you wish it, I would show you the rooms your older self once inhabited.”

“No, Pabbi. Let them serve as remembrance for you and Mamma and Thor.”

Pabbi cups his cheek in his big hand. “Are you certain?”

“I may yet change my mind. But for now it is so. Only – only, please, I don’t want to be in the nursery anymore. It is lonely there without Thor.”

His father nods thoughtfully. “You are a young man in need of a suite to make his own. I think I might know of a good set of rooms, though they still yet reside in Thor’s Hall.”

“I like being near him,” Loki says. “It’s hard sometimes to think of him as I do – he was smaller than me, and so loud and boisterous and running about. And now he is very tall and very broad, which is lucky because he has the weight of the entire Nine on his shoulders.”

“You said it best, Loki. Your brother becomes Allfather,” Pabbi replies quietly, the barrel of his chest rising under Loki’s ear in a sigh. “It is far too easy to get lost in the ruling of a kingdom, for living souls to become pawns on a board. A king spends every waking moment, and often every sleeping hour, consumed with doubts of his decisions, but the real danger is when a king no longer loses sleep over his kingdom.”

It is the most honest thing his father has ever said to him. He sits up enough to look at him, and Pabbi gazes back, smoothing Loki’s curls back from his temple. “It sounds difficult.”

“I have not always been a good king, and the mistakes I have made could fill a library. They weigh heavily on me. My word is law, and I have the power over death. One man or ten thousand, it is the most terrible responsibility.”

“But you always know what to do,” Loki says, staring at him. “You are Allfather.”

“I am Allfather,” Pabbi replies gently, thumb at Loki’s cheekbone. “And it is not a mantle I would wish on anyone, let alone my sons.”

“Is it very awful and lonely, Pabbi?”

“At times, yes.”

Loki chews on his lower lip. “And Thor is becoming Allfather. He will ascend to the throne in your place.”

“Indeed he will. Thor too will be plagued with indecision, agonize over every choice, and fill his own library with mistakes. He has something, however, that I did not. You.”

“Me? But what can I do? Thor no longer needs protecting.”

“You said it yourself. Thor often thinks along a narrow path. It will be up to you to show him what he could do if he altered his line of thinking.” He touches his thumb to Loki’s chin. “That you, young man, have already sworn to protect the mortal realm from harm tells me just what kind of advisor you will be. I am filled with peace, knowing that one day I will leave Asgard in capable and caring hands.”

He feels himself blush, and Pabbi smiles, pressing a kiss there to his fringe.

Mamma stands from her loom and walks towards them, holding her skirts up from the dew still glittering on the morning grass. She is resplendent in the morning light, her golden hair falling over her shoulder, her apron where she wiped her fingers clean of her dyes a multitude of colors splashed on white. Loki looks up at his father. “Is she going to scold you for tearing your robe?”

“Probably,” Pabbi says, wincing.

Loki starts giggling and can’t stop. “I can’t believe I saw your hosen. I can’t wait to tell Thor.”

“Loki.”

“They were blue! And stripy!”

“Loki!”

He scrambles off his father’s lap before he can swat at him and monkeys down the tree, racing past his mother, who presses a hand to her mouth in laughter, and runs out the door before either of them can catch him.

 

.

Over the course of the summer, Loki’s life changes dramatically. If anyone had told him at his Name Day that he would go from being the second and forgotten prince ( _Insurance,_ Skildir sneers in his head), to being the center of his parent’s world and doted on by everyone who met him, he would have laughed until he cried and called them a stinking liar. But that is exactly what happens.

Once it’s decided by Eir and Mamma that all has been done for them as could be done, the Midgardians are transported back to their Realm. The younger man never woke, not in all the time he’s spent on Asgard, but the Son of Coul is on his own feet. He is resting his weight on a cane when Loki and Thor come to say farewell at the Bifrost. He clasps Thor’s hand tightly in his before his eyes meet Loki’s, calm and impermeable like glass.

Loki is holding his brother’s hand tightly, half hidden behind his hip, when the Son of Coul comes to him. He cannot lower himself to his knee, mending as he is, but he bends at the waist until they are of an eye. His lips curve, just a little bit. “You’re a good boy, Loki. I’m glad I got to know you.”

The words startle him, and he chews on his lower lip. That he calls him a good boy, and with such warmth and conviction in his voice, makes Loki want to squirm.

“Thank you, sir,” he whispers, half hiding in Thor’s tunic, much to his brother’s amusement. He means to pinch Thor’s backside for the offense, but the Son of Coul’s eyes are blue and bright and locked on him as they haven’t been in all this time, healing in Mamma’s care. The Midgardians are very stout creatures, he’s learned, and they make up for their short lives by being incredibly discerning and insightful. He likes them so terribly much, so when the Son of Coul offers his hand, Loki reaches out and clasps it, as a man would. “Be well and safe travels.”

“Likewise,” the Son of Coul replies, and with a last few words for Thor, he turns to his beloved, lying on the special bed that Eir had fashioned for him for the journey. With a flash of color, the first Midgardians Loki has ever met are gone. Loki thinks he’ll always recognize the exact blue of the Son of Coul’s eyes in the maelstrom of the Bifrost.

Once the Midgardians leave, Loki has countless days with Mamma. She comes to Thor’s Hall to breakfast with them, and sometimes Loki will stay with her afterward while Thor is busy attending to his duties and working on their proposal for Jotunheim. It is slow going, slower even than Loki thought it would be. They miss their month-mark to bring their proposal to Pabbi’s Council, though not for lack of trying on their part. Thor had sent a formal missive to the Court of Jotunheim with a simple question – could the Jotnar digestive system support the consumption of grain – and inadvertently uncovered a terrible problem.

The knowledge of the corpus, the most basic of arts, has been lost on Jotunheim – indeed, King Helblindi hadn’t even understand what they were asking. The Jotnar had reverted to mysticism, believing that the spirits of the planet would heal and feed them.

That his horror is reflected on Thor’s stunned face is of little comfort. That Mamma is caught by the threads of fate for almost a day when they tell her motivates Thor’s desperation.

Thor had since written to healers all over the Nine Realms, looking for any who might be able to help, and had found more of the same – not many still living understood the health needs of the Jotnar. To know that the healing arts of an entire people had been lost fills Loki with a terrible sadness, an open wound that sits beneath his breast. No creatures deserve to be shunned to the point of extinction, much less a people whose only fault was that their ancestors fought a war with Asgard a thousand years ago and lost.

Thor feels the same, but unlike Loki has the power to act on it. He uses his name to reach deeply into every Realm, to put out word that he is in search of Jotnar healers, to cajole anyone who might listen to lend their aid to his search, and to convince those who would doubt him of his sincerity. Still, it is only luck that they are finally put into contact with an ancient Jotnar healer named Merlo, who resides in the House of Scholars on Vanaheim.

Loki hadn’t known that Thor went to Pabbi with the problem until days later, and he doesn’t think he will ever learn the words that were said between father and son. There is a deep respect between them that Loki doesn’t understand, nor does he think he ever will – it is something only for Allfathers to know, the younger and the elder. It is because of that respect that Pabbi doesn’t dismiss their project out of hand the night he comes to find them in Thor’s study. Thor doesn’t seem to realize he’s being quizzed – or if he does, to what end. Loki watches as his father grows satisfied over Thor’s passionate replies and the strength of his resolve.

“You have convinced me, my son,” Pabbi tells him, and Thor’s face grows slack with surprise. “Your plan is not without its flaws, but it is as strong as can be made with so many variables still unknown.”

Thor’s eyes flick down to the parchments on his desk, brow creased with thought. “What should we do? Invite this healer to Asgard?”

“No,” Pabbi says, at length.

“Visit him in Vanaheim? But what if the answers we seek only unearth more questions?”

Pabbi waits.

“Oh,” Thor says. Then, “They will never go for it.”

“Who won’t go for what?” Loki asks.

“Father means for us to reach out to Jotunheim and start a diplomatic mission.”

“Oh,” Loki says. He frowns. “Well yes, of course, that makes perfect sense.”

Thor shakes his head, shuffling the parchments back into a tidy pile. “King Helblindi hates Asgard. The return of the Casket notwithstanding, pigs will fly before he agrees to diplomatic talks.”

“You don’t know what’s possible if you don’t try,” Loki tells him sensibly, patting Thor on one big arm. “Besides, we aren’t going to ask him. We’re going to talk to Healer Merlo and explain the Jotnar’s plight, and then _he_ is going to contact King Helblindi and do the work for us.”

Thor blinks at him, eyebrow puckered. “What do you mean?”

Pabbi has that look he gets sometimes when Loki has been particularly brilliant. Loki fights not to squirm under the warmth and praise. “Well, Healer Merlo has a reputation for – what was it?”

Thor shuffles the parchments on his desk again, searching for the letter they’d received from the Head Healer of the House of Scholars. The tone of the letter had not been a kind one. Thor skims it briefly, tapping a finger to the sprawling print. “Head Healer Vernon says he is, and I quote, ‘a bloody-minded bastard of a genius with so much contempt for the House of Laufey that he’d rather live naked like a beast under the paralyzing Vanir sun than ever step foot in that pox-riddled Utgard palace ever again’, end quote,” Thor says. He can’t help but smile when Pabbi snorts. “Colorful, this Merlo.”

“Exactly,” Loki says, beaming. “Someone with that much passion, with so much knowledge of the healing arts, and who – through our very public, somewhat desperate searching – we’ve just concluded is one of the last remaining beings alive with the knowledge to keep the Jotnar from certain doom, is the best person to convince King Helblindi we mean no harm and wish to help the Jotnar people. After all, Healer Merlo hates the House of Laufey as much as he hates us. He has nothing to lose, and everything to gain – helping his people regain the knowledge of their own health. If he can use the Asgardians to make it happen, that much better. If he can make Laufey’s son bend to his whim, even more-so.”

Loki _loves_ that he’s put that astonished look on Thor’s face. Pabbi leans back in his seat and folds his fingers over his stomach, content.

“How did you come to be so clever?” Thor asks, tugging on one of his curls.

“I’ve always been clever,” Loki says with a scowl.

“That is blatantly untrue,” Pabbi says. “I seem to recall you once vomiting all over Ambassador Horth.”

“I was a _baby_ ,” Loki yells, as his father and brother burst into laughter. It is the _worst_ story, trotted out at holidays and banquets, and Loki never gets to defend his honor because he’d been a tiny baby and hadn’t know any better. “That doesn’t count, Pabbi!”

His father’s eye is creased at the corner, and that awful expression has faded from Thor’s eyes, so it is a job well done, even at the expense of Loki’s pride. His brother sighs and shuffles the parchments for a moment, as if they hold some secret that just hasn’t been found yet. “We’ll send a letter to Healer Merlo in the morning. In truth, this situation is far more dire than I expected it to be.”

“What was your expectation?” Pabbi asks.

“We would give the Jotnar a percentage of grain until their own crops were recovered enough that they would no longer need our aid.”

“It’s never that easy, because living beings are not that simple. Your patience will be tested at every corner, my son, but this is what it means to be a ruler. To fight injustice not with your fists, but with your cunning, your patience, and your understanding.”

Thor looks very, very young in that moment, and for the first time since waking up in this new world Loki truly sees his brother in that adult face. He clenches his fingers together so he won’t reach out, won’t ruin this moment between his father and brother. “I feel as if I must apologize, Father.”

“No,” Pabbi says, simply. “To be king is to recognize the faults in those who came before. I did my best with the choices I had before me, but I do not claim to be all-knowing, despite my reputation for having traded an eye for wisdom. I do not know if I would have made a different choice during the war, but we are at war no longer and our peace has held for over a thousand years, recent incidents aside. It’s time to bring the Jotnar back into the fold. That it was _you_ who saw the time had come, _you_ who have taken the steps to do so, despite the defiance you would show your father and king, brings me peace.”

Thor stares at their father like he’s never seen him before, and Loki doesn’t know why. Father has always been so open with them, but maybe things had changed in the years since Loki was a boy. Maybe his father had closed to them, in some way, for Thor to look as if the entire foundation under his world has shifted. “I am honored to be the son of such a wise king.”

“No,” Pabbi says again, and covers Thor’s tightly knotted fingers with his own. “It is I who am honored, to be the father of such a wise son.”

 

.

Healer Merlo does indeed contact King Helblindi, just as Loki knew he would. What is said in his correspondence Loki and Thor are not privy to, but Loki can guess it must have been so strongly worded that even a proud king like Helblindi had bowed under its weight.

What follows is the most truly breathtaking show of politics Loki has ever seen. For two months there is a parade envoys and letters, the exchange of promises and new ambassadors. Pabbi and Thor each must give their word that there is to be no violence, a promise that King Helblindi does not immediately reciprocate, resulting in another torrent of messages delivered by harried, terrified messengers. By the time it’s all said and done, their plans are in place: General Tyr, whose reputation proceeds him as the most honorable and trustworthy of men in the Nine Realms, will serve as Pabbi’s ambassador to Jotunheim. He will be accompanied by his eldest daughter, Reya, and both recognize that though they will be received with all due process, they are hostages of a sort, because Healer Merlo is to come to Asgard in the accompaniment of King Helblindi’s younger sibling, Byleistr, who will serve as the ambassador to Asgard.

When the final signature is put to parchment, Loki is exhausted and Thor so grumpy that he takes two days to ride out with the Warrior’s Three around the Asgardian countryside, letting out his aggression by bringing down the beasts that will be served at the feast to welcome their esteemed guests.

It wasn’t at all what Loki had been expecting when he asked Thor if the Jotnar could eat bread, but he can’t say it hasn’t been particularly effective.

The weeks leading up to the forum had been barely controlled chaos, but the morning that the Jotnar party is due to arrive has all the calm, still, _royal_ air of a state visit. Loki _loves_ state visits, and though he’s just a boy, even he can recognize the importance of this moment. Thor had been working for years to turn popular opinion, to bring the Jotnar people back into the Nine, and all his hard work has finally led them to this moment.

The pride on Thor’s face warms Loki to the heart.

It seems all of Asgard has come to witness the event, and the streets are filled near to bursting with people wanting to catch a glimpse of the royal family traveling to the Bifrost. Pabbi and Mamma are dazzling in their finery – Pabbi in his golden ceremonial armor and helm, Mamma in her silver gown with pearls stitched in luminous patterns. Even Thor has dressed in splendor, gleaming silver armor and a red cape that drapes over his enormous shoulders. Lady Kari, the royal seamstress, had made Loki a fine tunic and coat of finest brocade, in green and silver to bring out the color of his eyes. The same brocade lines the collar of Mamma’s dress. “So I can keep you close to my heart,” she had said just for him, and Loki had beamed with embarrassed delight.

Heimdall is waiting for them at the Bifrost, as he always is, and as they wait for the clock to turn he stares at Loki, as he always does. Not even that gaze can dampen Loki’s spirits, and when Pabbi says, “Open the Bifrost,” Loki positively _squirms,_ squeezing Mamma’s hand.

“Don’t be frightened,” Mamma says, brushing one of his errant curls from his temple.

“I’m not frightened,” Loki says at once, though he is, a little. Heimdall twists Hofund and the Bifrost explodes with color, funneling out into the stars. “Can I stay next to you though?”

“Yes, dear one,” Mamma replies softly, and she shares a look with Pabbi over Loki’s head that he can’t decipher.

Heimdall twists Hofund once more, and when at last the vibrant colors of the Bifrost fade, the Jotnar party stands before them.

Loki’s first impression of them is that they’re _tall_. So tall Loki didn’t think even Thor’s words could have prepared him, and his knees go a bit weak. He’s grateful to be holding Mamma’s hand, for her reassuring squeeze.

Loki’s history books painted them as large, blue, hulking, but Loki realizes they got it all wrong. The frost giants are blue, true enough, but in such dazzling shades they look as if they were carved right from evening sky. They are _beautiful_ , and Loki swallows as the reality of what he’s seeing cascades over him. The giant who can only be Lord Byleistr is at the head of the party, so tall Loki thinks he must only come to the frost giant’s knee. In deference to the climate of Asgard, he wears only a kilt and cape at his shoulder, and both are made of fine animal pelts. He is draped in jewels, as befits his station, gold and silver and a strange, coppery-green that circles his head. His skin is the rich color of cobalt, so brilliant he almost shimmers in the golden light of the Bifrost. What surprises Loki the most are his magnificent horns, enormous and curving, which lift up high over his head and curl back behind his ears. They are so densely carved with runes that they look like a crown, which Loki thinks was likely the point.

There is a tangle of emotions in Loki’s breast he doesn’t understand, looking up at Lord Byleistr. Fear, yes, though he thinks it is only the shock of their massive presence. Mostly – mostly he feels like weeping, and he doesn’t understand why.

“Lord Byleistr, third Bairn of Farbauti, third Bairn of Laufey, sibling of King Helblindi, I greet you,” Pabbi says into the silence, and Loki almost jumps.

“King Odin, First Bairn of Bestla, First Bairn of Bor, Allfather of the Nine Realms, I greet you,” says Lord Byleistr, and they bow to one another.  His voice is so deep it seems to shake in Loki’s chest, and his fingers tighten on his mother’s instinctively.

“You are most welcome, as honored guest of the Aesir,” Pabbi says, and holds out a hand beside him. “May I introduce Queen Frigga, Allmother of the Nine Realms.”

Loki startles like a frightened doe when Lord Byleistr comes to one knee before Mamma. He crosses his fist before his chest and bows twice, and Loki has _no idea what is going on_ , but Mamma must because she goes to her knee as well, with a rustle of her beautiful skirts, and bows to him four times. Lord Byleistr looks to Loki, his eyes like polished stones, so red they shine like light from the dark blue of his face. He studies him with a quiet intensity that he doesn’t understand, but when Lord Byleistr rises it is with temperance, waiting for Mamma to stand too before he speaks. “His Majesty King Helblindi, Second Bairn of Farbauti, Second Bairn of Laufey, Scion of the Frozen Realm and Lord of the Six Moons, extends his greetings and his well wishes for a fruitful meeting of our peoples.”

“I accept his well wishes,” Pabbi says, “and hope that this meeting between our peoples will be of mutual benefit for all. I bring to you my First Bairn, Thor, Crown Prince of the Realm Eternal, Lord of Thunder, Master of Wind and Rain.”

Thor bows deeply, as does Lord Byleistr. Loki had half expected him to go to his knee again, but it seems as if that particular honor was for Mamma alone. “Well met, Crown Prince Thor.”

“Likewise, Sovereign Prince Byleistr,” Thor says. “I welcome you to Asgard, and look forward to the following days so that we might bring our people together in friendship.”

“Your words do you service. I accept your welcome and your kind greeting, and look forward to a fruitful meeting.”

There is a curious pause, and when Loki looks up he finds Pabbi gazing at him. It lasts only for a moment, and Loki doesn’t understand why. “I bring to you my Second Bairn, Loki, Sovereign Prince of the Realm Eternal, Protector of the Crown.”

Lord Byleistr inclines his head to him, and Loki’s knees feel as if they’re made of jelly. He crosses his arm across his chest, awkward because he is clutching Mamma’s hand, and though Mamma had told him that was the proper way to greet him he knows he has caught Lord Byleistr by surprise. Mamma squeezes his hand and Loki whispers, “Well met, Lord Byleistr.”

“Well met,” he replies, his voice a rumble, before he looks once more to Pabbi. “King Odin, I present to you my party. I bring to you my Fourth Bairn, Prince Brun,” and a boy who is as tall as Pabbi steps forward. He wears a kilt of woven fabric Loki has never seen the like of, and finely made. Around his neck a large medallion the same coppery green as his father’s diadem shines in the light of the Bifrost. Unlike his father he has hair, a thick black mane of it tied into twisting braids around his head, anchored at his small horns. His eyes are a deeper and lusher red than his father’s, and when he bows it is with unsteady movements, as if he is unsure how and wishes no offence. “King Odin and family, thank you for receiving us,” he says, and though his voice is several octaves higher than his father’s, it rumbles just the same.

Brun can’t be much older than Loki is, and he feels a sudden rush of glee. Perhaps they could be friends. Loki has not played with another boy his age – has not played with any other children at all – since he woke up in this brave new world.

Lord Byleistr goes on to make introductions of Healer Merlo and his student, Erli. Even in such advanced age, Merlo is as tall as Lord Byleistr, if not as wide. His skin is bleached a light blue at the creases of his joints, and he wears a simple white tunic that falls to mid-thigh, cinched at his waist with a belt filled with vials and potions. Loki would love to open each one and peak inside, and Mamma squeezes his hand because he can’t stop _squirming_. Lord Byleistr’s body servant, Lit, brings up the party. He is carrying several packs and bags, and behind him are strange metal chests that Loki thinks must contain what the frost giants will need for their visit.

Once arrangements are made for their things, they step out of the Bifrost. Loki is proud by how startled the frost giants are at the view before them, Asgard laid out in such splendor, gold and green and white and blue, the crown glory of the Nine Realms.

Pabbi, Thor and Lord Byleistr walk ahead of them, talking with bowed heads, and Mamma follows with Healer Merlo and his student, already speaking of the healing arts. Loki thinks perhaps Mamma has orchestrated it that way, because Loki barely waits for them to step out of the Bifrost before he says, “Well met, Brun son of Byleistr.”

The boy startles, looking down at him. They’re not so different in height, actually, and Loki thinks that Brun is perhaps a bit younger than he is, to be such a small frost giant. “Hello, son of Odin,” he replies. “Forgive me, are you Prince Thor or Prince Loki?”

“Loki,” he replies with a smile. “Though I suppose without Mjolnir, it’s easy to make the mistake. My brother is walking with your father.”

“My modir,” Brun corrects, staring at him. “What is Mjolnir?”

“Thor’s great hammer. It was crafted by the elves in the heart of a dying star. There is no other tool like it – one to destroy, but also one to build.”

Brun nods, clasping his hands behind his back. It is a decent mimicry of what his fath– his _modir_ is doing ahead of them. He looks a bit scared, now that Loki thinks on it, when he notices Brun’s fingers clenched together at the small of his back. “Oh yes. I know of Prince Thor’s hammer.”

“I like the way your voice does that,” Loki says, because he can’t _not_. “The way it rumbles in your throat.”

“It is to call across the wind and sea and storm,” Brun replies, blinking at him. “Your world has no storms?”

“Sometimes!” This, Loki gets to say with glee. “My brother can make it storm. Rain and lightning. It’s why he’s the Master of Stores.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. Perhaps before it is time for you to go home, Thor will show you his seidr. Just for show!” he’s quick to add. “I think you’d like it.”

Brun hums, that low reverberating thing, which shakes in Loki’s chest and makes him grin. “Asgard is not what I imagined it to be.”

“Really? What did you think it would be like?”

“Oppressive. Hot. Though it glitters as I knew it would.”

Loki looks out across his world, the golden spires before them, the wooded green at the edge of sight, and always the water. “What is your home like?”

“Beautiful in its own way,” Brun replies. He keeps glancing at Loki out of the corner of his eye. Perhaps he too thought it would be a dreadfully boring visit. “And now that the Casket is with us once more, the _sakna_ is gone. The world sings below our feet.”

“What is _sakna_?”

“Hmm. There is no real translation in the Allspeak. Loss, I suppose, would be a good word, though it is deeper than that.”

Loki’s heart squeezes in his chest. “My brother told me your world is very different. That there isn’t vegetation.”

“What is vegetation?”

Well _that_ answered his question. “Well – you see there, in the distance, west of the castle?”

“Those green things? Are they trees?”

“Yes! Do you have trees on Jotunheim?”

“Quite unlike yours, but yes.” Brun glances at him, a small, shy smile on his face. “They are made of metal.”

“Really?”

“Yes. We call them the Ironwoods, and they only grow on Utgard. That is why Utgard is the seat of the frost throne, because without the Ironwoods nothing can be built that will last time.”

Loki’s mind is whirling, and he has so many _questions_ , but Mamma turns and calls, “Come along children,” and Loki grins.

“Do you want to see Pabbi’s horse? It has eight legs.”

Delight fills Brun’s dark red eyes. “I don’t know what a horse is. Are they not supposed to have eight legs?”

“Horses are riding animals, among other things, and no, only four, but Sleipnir is very special.”

“Yes,” Brun says, immediately. “And – and I also wish to see the trees, and my books say that there are things called tomatoes here, that grow on small vines, and I’d like to taste them.”

“We will do all of that,” Loki says, so full of joy he can barely stand it. “Prince Brun, will…will you be my friend?”

Brun beams back at him. “Yes. Will you be mine?”

“Yes,” Loki says, giggling despite himself, and together they race to close the distance to Mamma.

 

.

To say that Loki and Brun get along is an understatement.

Loki – as the good host – shows Brun absolutely _everything_. In the name of politics and friendship, of course. The Healing Halls, where Mamma and Healer Merlo are already hard at work, and the orchard where the golden apples grow, and the river that travels through the castle from the mountains, and of course the nursery where Brun is enchanted by Loki’s few – and new – toys, especially the puzzles that come to life once completed.

They run _everywhere_ in what Loki knows is not a very princely manner, but they can’t help it. They run all over the castle and outside in the gardens and up spires and down to the basements, and Loki shows Brun the secret passages that were once used for servants and Brun tells him all kinds of stories about his parents and his siblings and his homeland.

On the third day of the Jotnar’s arrival, he and Brun are trying to escape from Cook when they almost crash into Lord Byleistr and Pabbi coming from the room where Pabbi keeps the maps of the Nine Realms. The chicken in Loki’s arms squawks loudly and flaps its wings and promptly poops on the toe of his boot, but even that is secondary to their parents staring down at them in surprise.

Lord Byleistr recovers first, and barks something in what is _not_ the Allspeak. Brun freezes immediately, suitably chagrined and still as he stares at the ground. There is a long silence, save for the flapping chicken.

Loki begins to think, with a growing horror, that their playing has damaged the meeting of their two peoples, when Lord Byleistr sighs. The look he and Pabbi trade would probably be very funny in any other situation, one exasperated parent to another, but Lord Byleistr only sweeps his cloak aside for them to pass. Brun smiles impishly up at his modir as they slip by, and when they turn the corner starts to giggle uncontrollably. Loki, clutching the wall with one hand and the chicken with the other, chances a peek back around the corner.

Pabbi has a small smile on his face, and Lord Byleistr’s severe and serious brow has softened. The chicken’s squawk turns into a shriek and Brun giggles and grabs his hand, yanking him down the hall.

Loki feels a bit bad about the fact that he’s left Thor to do most of the work with the aid treaty, in the first flush of this wonderful friendship he’s building with Brun, but when he apologizes to Thor that night at the evening feast, Thor just smiles. “It is good to see you so happy,” he says, cupping Loki’s neck in his big hand before ruffling his curls, even though it makes Loki wrinkle his nose with annoyance. “Do you like Prince Brun?”

“Yes,” Loki says, helplessly, because he _does_ , so terribly much. “He has a pet kykvendi.”

“What is that?”

“I don’t know, but I want one too,” Loki says, and Thor laughs. “And, and, he has three siblings older than he, and the eldest is named Hymir and he is the crown prince, because King Helblindi lost his consort in childbirth some years ago and will never give his heart to another again. Brun says Hymir is very, very tall and very skinny, and he hasn’t yet lost his childhair, so people make fun of him and he gets into fights. Did you know that the frost giants are all bald when they’re grown up?”

“I did,” Thor replies, gazing at him with chin in his hand. “I didn’t know they had hair as children.”

“I know! Brun says that sometimes their hair is black, or sometimes it’s white. And he said that the warriors of the crown were all forced to shave their horns down for thousands of years, but when King Laufey died and King Helblindi came to the throne, he said anyone could grow their horns if they wanted to and that Lord Byleistr’s are the most beautiful in all the realm. They are, aren’t they?”

“They’re very impressive,” Thor says softly. There are so many emotions on his face Loki couldn’t hope to read them all. “I am more glad than I can say that you’ve found a friend in young Brun. What would you say if he came to Asgard to study seidr with you?”

His entire being seizes up for one long, tense second. He tries to squash the wriggling thing in his chest he knows is _hope,_ but it can’t be pressed down. His fingers knot in his napkin. “He would study here? Really?”

“Lord Byleistr has requested that the education of Brun, who has shown some promise with seidr, be a part of the negotiation.” Thor smiles at him when Loki squirms in his seat. “Brun would live here on Asgard during the late fall and winter seasons, and return home for the spring and summer, when it would be too warm for him to stay for long periods.”

“Truly, Thor?” Across from him, Brun – sitting next to Lord Byleistr – is giving Loki the pre-arranged signal (a nose wiggle and tug of the left ear) to slip away before the grownups could stop them. Lord Byleistr’s body servant, Lit, is glaring at his young charge as if he knows exactly what’s going on. “But – but that is only if you are able to find out that we can provide food for the Jotnar.”

“It has been a delicate situation,” Thor allows, and he’s far too much of a grownup to _wince_ , though Loki thinks he probably wants to. “You must remember, this is the first delegation from Jotunheim in over five hundred years.”

The hope in him deflates. “Pabbi is going to say no.”

“I don’t think he will,” Thor says gently, “but you must be prepared for it, brother. The Jotnar may leave without any proposal being signed. If Lord Byleistr is satisfied, he must still present our proposal to King Helblindi, who may say no as well. That is not even taking into account Healer Merlo, who is the grumpiest old man I’ve ever encountered in my life, and who may very well decide he no longer wants to be involved. They are a proud people, Loki, and have undergone centuries of hardship at our hand. To say yes to our aid would mean to swallow that pride. To say no would mean setting their recovery back for many years. King Helblindi will need to weigh all of these factors, and speak with his council and his people, before agreeing.”

Much without his meaning to, Loki’s eyes fill with tears. “If King Helblindi says no, then I won’t see Brun anymore.”

“That you have forged such a strong friendship with Lord Byleistr’s child in so little time has done more for these negotiations than you could possibly know.” Thor’s smile is broad on his face, and it isn’t the one that he hides all kinds of things behind. It is genuine, if not sad, and he tugs lightly at one of Loki’s curls. “I’m surprised by it, truthfully.”

“Brun is _wonderful_ ,” Loki says, for lack of any better way to describe his new friend. “He has a cheerful disposition and likes learning and is very inquisitive and he told me not to tell anyone, but the potatoes two nights ago made him pass so much gas he thought he was going to lift off and fly around the room,” and it startles a laugh so genuine out of Thor that Loki can’t help but grin. “I _like_ him. He’s my friend and if we got to study together we could become _best_ friends.”

Brun does the signal again, which he turns into a very fake sneeze when Lord Byleistr looks down at him. Loki doesn’t laugh because Thor is _right there_ , but his brother has always been wise to him. He arches a brow, lips twitching, first at Loki, then across at Brun, and Brun beams and Loki smiles hopefully and Thor _sighs_. “Fine. Fine! But I’ll only hide your disappearance until Mother asks where you are. You know I could never lie to her.”

“Thank you, brother,” Loki says, grinning broadly, as he wiggles out of his seat and sets his napkin near his plate.

“No leaving the palace.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Not even a toe, Loki.”

“You got boring in your old age,” Loki replies, and giggles at Thor’s growl even as Brun slips free of his modir’s clutches and they race out of the feast hall together.

 

.

The treaty is signed by the end of the fortnight.

In it, Asgard will trade eighteen thousand kilos of grain every season – which when mixed with a very common salt on Jotunheim creates a hard cake called _myki_ , a hardy bread once a staple of the Jotun diet – for one-half thousand kilos of diamonds, so plentiful on Jotunheim that there are entire glittering beaches of the hard and shining stones. Asgard will assist Jotunheim in rebuilding the underground farms of ancient times, so ancient that none of the party save for Healer Merlo even remembered of their existence. There, the Jotnar will grow their summer crops, including squashes, sprouts, and all manner of tubers, pears and currants and clementines, the seeds for which Asgard will provide. A school for healers will open in Utgard, where Eir’s ladies and Healer Merlo will teach a new generation of Jotun the healing arts. All travel and trade embargos are to be lifted, and Asgard will help rebuild Jotunheim’s Kaupstadr – market town – which was once the largest in all the Nine Realms. Jotun scholars will come to learn at Asgardian universities, and the Ambassador to Asgard, Lord Byleistr, will have a seat on Pabbi’s council, equal at the side of the representatives from all the Nine Realms.

And finally Prince Brun, Fourth Bairn of Lord Byleistr and Keeper of the Seal, will come to Asgard to learn seidr with Odin Allfather’s own son, Prince Loki.


	3. Chapter 3

Loki has never been happier in his whole entire life.

It’s scary sometimes thinking about happiness, about waking up and being happy, and going to sleep and being happy. An alien concept, to be sure. He hadn’t precisely been _un_ happy in the Before Time, when Thor was a boy like him, but Loki’s happiness had come in small, controlled bursts – playing with Thor in the apple orchard, helping Lady Hilda with her chores, seeing Mamma at the beginning of each day. They had been bright, lovely moments in a landscape of ever-encroaching darkness, of the pain his magic brought him, of the way people looked at him, of the way his _otherness_ bled into everything he was.

But that was then. That was when Thor was small and Pabbi had thick, blond hair and Mamma’s face was like porcelain. That was when Braggi and Baldr were still alive, and Skildir was his teacher, and Thor’s idiot friends delighted in tormenting him.

In Loki’s quiet moments, in his most personal thoughts he can’t reveal to anyone, he’s _glad_ he isn’t there anymore. It makes him feel terribly guilty, but overpowering that guilt is a relief sweet as milk and cool on his tongue. No one is mean to him here. Mamma hugs him all the time, and Pabbi dotes on him and lets him play with the tiny toy warriors he uses when planning campaigns, and Thor lets him ride his shoulders anytime he wants to. Even the servants are nice to him, and sometimes give him sweets he isn’t supposed to have because it makes him overexcited and restless.

Perhaps most lovely in this brand new world are Loki’s new suite of rooms, away from the nursery for the very first time. They are _his rooms,_ that he doesn’t have to share with anyone, and though the thought had made him feel a bit wobbly for a while, in no time at all he had come to adore his new space. As Pabbi had promised, his rooms remained in Thor’s Hall, across the way and down from Thor’s own suite. That he should be so close to his brother had filled him with glee so fierce he had wiggled when he’d realized it, in part just to make Thor laugh. But honestly, Loki’s suite is incredible – he has an enormous four-poster bed that he needs a stepstool to get onto, plush and thick and soft and decorated in lovely shades of blue and green. He has his own portico with a breathtaking view of Asgard’s southern province, mountains and hills and the valley proper where he knows the little village of Harstad sits nestled away from the unforgiving mountain winds. He has his own washroom he doesn’t have to share with his stinky beast of a brother, and all the privacy he needs to care for himself as he ought. No more would he have to bathe in the middle of the night while his brother snored from his bed.

But perhaps most lovely and most wonderful is the magician’s study. Pabbi had said he would need such a study once he began his schooling, and the study has everything he could possibly need and want. It is full of vials and cauldrons and _books_ , so many books that he couldn’t hope to read them all. There is a massive, enchanted worktable that raises and lowers itself depending on if he’d like to sit or stand. When Pabbi shows it all to him Loki can only hug himself and smile, so hard his face hurts, because he has never been so happy in all of his entire life. Soon, he’d have two of the best teachers in all the Nine Realms teaching him, and Loki would become a great seidmadr, powerful and controlled. He would be strong enough to protect his brother, his parents, and his people.

The only thing standing in the way of this wonderful new life is Loki himself.

He knows it isn’t rational, this part of him whispering that the affection his family is showing him is conditional. He knows that his parents and brother love him and nothing could change that, but he is terrified of even _chancing_ it, of doing something that would make them hate him. He’s trying to be a good boy, to be worthy of his family’s love, to be the person they think he is. The problem is that he’s _not_ that boy, and never has been _._

Loki is keeping his true self, the self no one liked, the self who loved mischief and trickery, the self who threw temper tantrums and hollered on top of his lungs, all wrapped up and tucked under his skin close to his heart. If he doesn’t, all Pabbi would have to do is press the runes inside his skin and send him back, and Loki _doesn’t want to go back_. He wakes up sometimes gasping and sweat-soaked, horror a vice around his throat with his nightmares wispy and dark and snarled in his mind, at the very _notion_ that Pabbi would send him back to that place where he was tolerated, underfoot, and an annoyance to all.

He doesn’t want to be the second and forgotten son ever again.

Loki likes tricks but this is the most painful one he’s ever played, because he knows that eventually the part of himself he’s hiding is going to come free and his family is going to realize what an awful boy he actually is. Skildir always did say he was a snake in the grass, but for being such a mean old man, he really was the wisest of them all. He recognized Loki’s deceitfulness long before anyone else did.

Loki knows the happiness he feels is fleeting. Soon enough he’d ruin it all.

 

.

Brun arrives in Asgard at the first touch of frost on morning dew.

They’ve been trading letters back and forth, as they waited for the season to change so that Brun could withstand Asgard’s heat. Brun was always curiously _serious_ in his correspondence, so much so that at first Loki had thought perhaps he’d misread their friendship completely. When he’d mentioned his concern to Pabbi, whispered there against his shoulder one night in the king’s study, Pabbi had told him in his quiet and thoughtful way, “My son, I doubt young Brun knows how to write in the Allspeak. He’s likely drawing on assistance from one of his servants.”

He’d been right, of course – Pabbi was always right. It had just made Loki love Brun all the more, for trying so hard to be his friend.

It’s all a lot of pomp and circumstance, when Brun finally arrives in Asgard. Loki knows that this is the next new chapter of the healing between their peoples, that Brun being invited to study with Loki was a high honor for the Jotnar people, and that there are political complications that he doesn’t understand, but Loki doesn’t care about any of that, not really, not like he should. All he cares about, as the Bifrost finally fades and Brun and Lord Byleistr stand there in their jewels and finery, with their retinue of servants and luggage, is that _Loki’s friend is finally here_.

Brun is just as Loki remembers, if not a bit taller than last time he visited. It’s all very official and royal and there’s a lot of bowing and gifts and other nonsense, and Pabbi drones on for a bit, and there are ten royal scribes documenting this auspicious moment. Loki only has eyes for his friend. He waits, with barely contained glee, for Pabbi to invite him forward, and then all sense leaves him.

He was _supposed_ to bow and offer Brun the gift of a pelt – a snow rabbit for his shoulders, woven with delicate silver thread and covered with protection runes – but that is not what happens. What happens is that Loki throws his arms around Brun, and Lord Byleistr must _catch Loki’s offering_ , and it’s all incredibly embarrassing, or would be if Brun wasn’t squeezing him just as hard. They’re both yelling at each other with excitement, and Brun is lifting him off the ground because he really doesn’t know his own strength, and Loki is shouting, “The blue mirror turned white!” and Brun is giggling, “I told you it would work!” and then they’re talking over each other so fast Loki can barely understand his friend. It’s only when he realizes that the entire Bifrost has gone silent that he understands what he’s done.

Their parents are staring at them, mouths all but hanging open, and Loki cringes under their disbelief. Loki prides himself on being the smartest person in the room at any given moment, but that he miscalculated here, let his emotions take him over, speaks to how much he adores Brun. That doesn’t mean Pabbi isn’t going to be absolutely furious with him, or yell at him again for acting like a child and not a prince of the Realm Eternal.

He shrinks from his father’s gaze, but before he can apologize to their guests and make amends for his horrific breach in etiquette, the Jotnar all burst into laughter.

It’s so _loud_ , echoing in the Bifrost chamber like a gong. Lord Byleistr’s face is transformed with mirth, and Loki understands why Brun told him his modir was one of the great beauties of Jotunheim. Pabbi has a hand to his face, and Mamma is laughing outright, and Loki is mortified but can’t quite seem to let his friend go. Lord Byleistr gazes down at him with a warmth he had not shown the last time he was here, before laying the snow rabbit pelt over Brun’s thin shoulders. “This is a kind gift, young prince,” he says with his rumbly voice.

“It’s a welcome present,” Loki says, beaming up at him. The white of the pelt against the dark blue of Brun’s skin is so beautiful, and Loki loves that he got to give it to him, especially when Brun wiggles into its warmth. He hugs his friend again, so tightly, and Brun squeezes him right back. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

“Me too,” Brun says, full of joy, and takes his hand.

 

.

Brun is everything Loki could ever want in a friend. He’s funny, so smart, inquisitive and thoughtful; he has the most infectious laugh Loki has ever heard, and loves telling jokes at the most inopportune times. He makes it very hard to control the mischievous part of Loki’s nature, but Loki finds that he thrills in resisting, in strengthening his resolve, in using his fun-loving and cheerful friend’s antics to moderate his own.

They go everywhere, the two of them, until Thor jokes one night that their names are becoming interchangeable. Only, Loki has never felt such a deep and instant companionship with anyone, not even his beloved cousins. Brun is second to him only after Thor himself, and Thor is a grown man and busy with the running of his household and the protection of Asgard – he no longer has time to run and play and be the boy Loki longs for. Though Loki still saw him often, Loki has realized that Thor had been shielding him from the stretch of time that existed between them. He was the crown prince, and his life was consumed with work – work he had set aside during Loki’s first tremulous months in this new world, but which could not be put down forever. Not only was he assisting the Jotnar in the rebuilding of their world, but he had been tasked with putting down rebellions and shoring up the defenses of their allies across the Nine, as the time of the Convergence drew near.

Whenever Thor leaves Asgard Loki can tell it is with a heavy heart. He does his best to reassure Thor that he’s fine here in Asgard, until one day he realizes that he is.

It is clear, from the first, that Brun has charmed the King and Queen of Asgard utterly. Perhaps what draws them, as it draws Loki, is his new friend’s loving heart. Brun is _kind_ , from the top of his small horns to the bottom of his fat toes, in a way Loki doesn’t immediately recognize. Kind in that when Loki is self-deprecating, he is quick to tell him all the ways Loki is wonderful; kind in that praise falls from his lips like snowflakes, building on the ground under Loki’s feet until he feels buoyed by it, lifted by it, wrapped in his friend’s love. He shares everything he has with Loki and Loki, who is by his very nature a selfish creature, begins to learn to share back.

Very quickly, almost without his realizing it, Brun becomes Loki’s closest companion and dearest friend, and his love for him grows until it is near to bursting. When he tells Brun this one day when they’re hiding from Volstagg, one of the red braids from his beard clutched between them, Brun says, “You are my only friend, Loki, but even if you weren’t you would still be my best,” and starts to cry. It is happiness, Loki knows, because he feels it too, and he hugs Brun so tightly they almost fall backwards out of the barn loft.

That the love of Brun should not be universal is difficult to understand, but there are old prejudices at work that not even a new alliance could stop. For all that Loki has only seen nine passes of the stars he is very, very smart, and equally as observant. He would have to be blind not to notice the way that others react to Brun. Loki doesn’t know what his father has ruled, but he has known since Lord Byleistr’s first visit that the people of Asgard have been directed to treat all Jotnar with respect. The warriors, surprisingly, had been the most tolerant. Good soldiers understood the need for peace, better than the common people. The nobility had been more outwardly suspicious, and though they had treated Lord Byleistr and his party with respect – as Pabbi’s guests – respect did not mean acceptance. They have warned their children away from them, because though the children of the palace _already_ avoided Loki, that does not hold a candle to what they do _now_ when he and Brun race through the Great Hall, or go adventuring in the orchard. For all that his friend is cheerful to a fault, he can see his dark red eyes skipping longingly over the other children, with a hope that isn’t answered.

“People are ignorant, and stupid,” Loki tells him one day when they’re exploring the palace’s dusty towers. He and Brun had overheard the maids whispering of one warded by evil magic, and how none dared enter for fear of some latent spell entrapping them. Loki had no idea who could have warded it so, or what monster Pabbi had trapped there once upon a time. It was the most delicious of mysteries, and one Loki could not resist.

Unfortunately, the story of a tower warded by evil magic seems as if it was just that – a story. Still, he and Brun enjoyed a splendid morning getting filthy in the palace’s little used staircases and rooms, and Brun’s heavy mood had greatly improved. They had found an old volva’s study of particular interest, which despite being emptied still had a few small treasures tucked into small corners. The magic in Loki’s breast had been tickling since they entered.

Brun wriggles out from under the enormous wooden bed and sits back on his haunches, sighing. He is completely covered in dust and grime. One of his braids is coming uncoiled from around his horns. “It would not be different if you had come to Jotunheim instead, Loki. Worse, I think. The children there would distrust you as much as the children here distrust me. The lives of our peoples are long, and their memories longer.”

“That doesn’t make people less stupid. That makes people _more_ stupid,” Loki says, dropping down from one of the rafter’s where he’d scurried up, convinced he’d find something on one of the long wooden beams. All he’d found were dust motes, but he remains undeterred. “I don’t want to forget the past, not at all – it’s important that mistakes not be made again. But to linger in it, to be forever counting wrongs, is not the path forward. How are our people to ever become friends and heal our wounds if all we do is distrust one another?”

“What is obvious to you and me is not so to our families,” Brun says softly. “And even less so to the common people.”

“What does it matter what they think? We are princes, Brun, and younger brothers to kings. We will hold immeasurable power and be great magicians in service to our kingdoms.”

Brun grins at him. “Yes, this is true. We will be in service to our kingdoms. Filled with people.”

“Stupid people!”

“Ignorant people,” Brun corrects, though gently. “Mine more than yours. The war – it is in everything we are.”

Loki comes to kneel behind his friend and undo the braids that have come loose. Brun’s hair falls long and glossy and beautiful, so black it is almost blue, to his waist. It feels like silk in Loki’s hands. “Will you tell me of it?”

Brun is silent for a time, but Loki has come to understand that his friend was as thoughtful as he was cheerful, and sometimes needed time to collect his thoughts. Loki lets him, working Brun’s hair into elegant plaits, in patterns that please him. Brun sighs and lifts his face up to where the weak fall sun is streaming in through the high window, a triangle of light falling over them. “Do you remember when we met, and I told you of the _sakna_?”

“Yes.”

His friend hums, low, the sound shaking in his chest so loudly that a barn mouse squeaks and scurries across the wooden floor, disappearing into a tiny hole in the stone. “I’ve never known it to be, but Modir says that Utgard once glittered like a jewel, glowing with a light that lived deep underground. Padir Laufey ruled over a million subjects from a throne as magnificent as Allfather’s, and there was music and laughter and a great library, and a market so large that people from all the Nine came to buy and sell their wares. I can’t imagine it, truly. When Jotunheim went to war with Asgard, the Aesir took the _Skrin_ , what you call the Casket of Winters, and Jotunheim grew still. The water became brine, and food no longer grew. The fish became nothing but bones, and the Ironwoods crumbled to dust. And the _people_ , Loki. The Jotnar stopped growing, too, and became as cold and empty as the world under their feet. That is the _sakna_. Loss, and death, and suffering. Many have lived and died and never knew peace and growth and sunshine. Do you understand?”

It is an awful thing to hear his friend speak so, and for the first time he understands why Thor’s shoulders are so bowed all the time. How could he ever be unburdened of their father’s choices, when it had hurt so many?

“Prince Thor gave us back the _Skrin_ ,” Brun says, taking Loki’s trembling hands in his, his plaits falling around his shoulders half-done. “And the _sakna_ is not as heavy as it once was. But I don’t know if it will ever go away completely, not while there are still beating hearts on Jotunheim. _You_ know and _I_ know that the path forward is one of healing, yes? But our people don’t. They are frightened, Loki, and ignorant in their fear because they think Thor’s return of the _Skrin_ is another yoke, another thing Allfather will take from us if we displease him.”

The tears well up in Loki’s throat like water rushing through a broken dam. “You – you don’t think that.”

“I did, at first,” Brun says, so softly Loki can almost pretend he didn’t. “When Modir told me we were coming here, I thought – I thought that the Allfather would throw us in the dungeons, at the very least, or kill us where we stood, as he did Padir Laufey.”

Loki’s world narrows to a prick.

“Pabbi… Pabbi killed the King of Jotunheim?”

“Padir Laufey snuck into Asgard to fight the Allfather for the _Skrin,_ only a few years ago _._ ” Brun’s eyes go glossy with tears, and he sighs. “There was a mighty battle fought that day. Padir Laufey’s guilt was a thing so deep and desperate, the _elna_. The guilt of a king who rules over dying lands. The _elna_ made him so angry that it turned to madness, made him take chances he should never have taken.” Brun sighs again, shaky. “It is difficult for me, sometimes, to think of him like that. He was hardened by circumstance, but he loved us in his way.”

Shame chokes him, freezes his tongue and cuts off any words he could possibly say. Brun smiles his sad smile and pulls him into his arms, his cool, soft touch a comfort against Loki’s burning skin. The roaring in his ears is so loud. “Did you not know, my friend?”

Loki shakes his head, numb. “My father knew that Jotunheim was dying. Why did he not give King Laufey the Casket?”

“The same thing that guides the hearts of all people, Loki. Fear.” Brun tilts his chin up, gently, and brushes his thumbs over the tears frozen on Loki’s numb cheeks. “Your brother looked past his fear and saved us. He opened the door to a future we did not think we would have. Uncle King looked past his fear, too, and saved us. He accepted Thor’s word and in doing so, was able to bring the _Skrin_ back to our world, when Padir Laufey could not – through peace and words, not fighting and bloodshed. You and I are the symbols of our new friendship, and we are here to learn too. It will be up to us to guide the hearts and hands of our kings, when we come of age. Guide our people to a long-lasting peace.”

Loki buries his face there at Brun’s throat, hugging him tightly. “You are so wise. How will I ever be as wise as you?”

“I had a good teacher,” Brun says, patting Loki’s head gently. “My modir is the wisest of all Jotnar. It is often said that he had the best of his parents – strength and cunning and fearlessness, tempered by the heart of a poet. Modir told me to keep my heart open when I first visited Asgard, and in letting his wisdom guide me I have met my very best friend, the one who I would tell everything to and share everything with.”

Loki rubs the backs of his fingers under his nose and the heel of his hand over his eyes. “You do your family proud, Brun.”

Now it is Brun’s turn to blush, though with pleasure. They beam at one another until they start to giggle, and then Loki pokes him until he turns around again, to let him finish braiding his hair.

 

.

He waits until that night, after the evening meal is through and nightly ablutions completed, after the servants have turned down beds and Brun has gone back to his rooms on the other side of Loki’s hallway, and after Mamma has come to kiss him and wish him a good night. He waits until night has cloaked Asgard, that precious hour before the moons rose and bathed the land in dim light, and then Loki creeps out from the blankets Mamma had carefully arranged and loosens the floorboard in the corner of his bedroom.

This space is shallower than the hole he’d made in the nursery, small, enough only for the few bits and bobs he’d already accumulated, one of the pearls from Mamma’s favorite shawl, a book stolen from his father’s library, and his journal. His treasures stare up at him, and he runs his fingers over the bits and bobs he’s collected – he had added one of Thor’s cloak pins only this morning, diamonds glittering around the crest of the House of Odin. He presses a kiss to his fingertips and touches each of his treasures once, before moving them aside.

It is his journal he takes out, with careful hands, eyes darting to the window to make sure his father’s ravens are not perched and watching. He crawls under his new four-poster bed, pillow and blanket in tow – a false sense of privacy, he knows. He dares much writing down his inner-most thoughts, and it is with a near frenzied anxiety that he flips to the place he’s marked, and licks the tip of the fountain pen.

_Refrencing all green-marked entries._

_Brun does not know that I search for answers surownding my arrival here, how I came to be in a future that is not a future, but reality as my family sees it and I have come to acept. I myself do not know why I am desprate to learn the truth, only that it is a truth all have been sworn to keep from me. It fills me with dred to think why this is so, why they keep the events surownding my coming here secret._

Loki knows it’s wrong, that Pabbi would be furious if he knew Loki was trying to understand what happened to the older him. _He can’t stop trying,_ compelled to learn why he woke up chained and gagged in Pabbi’s Hall, why Thor spoke of Titans and Mamma nursed two Midgardian’s in the soul forge, when no Midgardians had ever visited Asgard before. For being such a consummate liar, he hates being lied to – and this is one falsehood that can’t be borne.

_My dea friend did not realise it, but this afternoon Brun gave me a peace of the mystery I’ve been un-covering since I woke up here. None in my family told me of the death of the King of Jotunhime, which happened in this very palace only a few short years ago. To conseal something of such magnitud from me – a king of one of the Nine Realms slayn in the palace keep!! – is evidense enough that the secrets Pabbi will not voice involve King Laufy. Was Laufy one of the reasons why I was captured on Midgaurd, and turned against my family and friends? Did he work with the Titan Thor spoke of? I know not, but this revalation brings me closer to the truth._

Loki doesn’t know what to think, with this new knowledge that Pabbi fought and killed King Laufey of Jotunheim, after he snuck into Asgard using a path other than the Bifrost. Something about the telling of it doesn’t sit right with him, as if he’s cocked an ear to listen to a tune being sung far away. He wants to hear the lyrics so badly, but he can’t. Trying to make the runes in his fingers tingle, even after he rubs them on the knees of his sleep pants.

He doesn’t think Brun is mistaken, but neither does he think his friend has all the facts. Pabbi was no king slayer. Laufey came to fight him for the Casket, and lost. He knows he only need ask his father and Pabbi will tell him what happened, explain the events in his soft, gentle voice, but Loki fears the truth.

_I do not doubt my family’s words when they say that the illness that consumed Loki the Elder could not be healed. What happened to him, and therfore to me? I wish to know the person he was, the sorcerer he became. Did the pain of being Other ever sofen into something that could be accepted? Did he ever love another?_

He dashes his wrist over his eyes. When he sighs, it’s shaky and rough.

_I am a bad, spiteful, cruel boy. There is no goodness in me that I have ever been able to find, and that I have tricked my family until now only speaks to my capasaty as a liar and a cheat. I fear every day that they will learn of my treachery, and yet still seak the truth I know will destroy me. But what choice do I have? How can I ever grow, when the fowndation on which I stand is swaying beneath me?_

With careful hands, he marks his page and closes his journal, whispering the only spell he knows over the leather, the only one his magic responds to – one of concealment and deception. Fitting, truly.

The journal fits neatly in the crevice he’d painstakingly dug out of the stone, slotting into place where it could not be seen, even should his hiding place be discovered.

With one more fretful look to the window, Loki pulls his father’s book free. One of the Titans of old stares at him with its one-eyed grimace from the cover.

 

_._

The arrival of the teachers who would instruct Loki and Brun in seidr is one of incredible fanfare, trumpets and grand feast and all. Loki doesn’t precisely know _why_ there is so much celebrating and carrying on, only he thinks it has more to do with the new alliance and friendship between Jotunheim and Asgard than it does with Loki and Brun beginning their studies.

The morning their teachers arrive is terribly exciting. Lit chases them down three hallways before he can catch Brun up to haul him to the bath, and his friend’s wails are token protest at best, if the exaggerated wink he gives Loki as he’s being carted off like a sack of flour indicates. Loki laughs for five minutes before Mamma appears with one of her ladies in waiting and two big fluffy towels, but Loki is a creature of poise and grace. He only runs down two hallways before letting Mamma catch him.

Pabbi’s court has assembled to witness this supposedly momentous occasion, though he thinks it’s more likely they’re here to enjoy the show before partaking in the Allfather’s generosity. Cook had fifteen boars on a spit when last he and Brun had investigated during their weekly filching expedition for sweetbreads.

Mamma stands near where Pabbi sits on Hlidskjalf, but Thor is with them on the dais in full armor and helm, Mjolnir at his hip. “Cleaned to a sparkle, despite the twin looks of disdain,” he says, laughing.

Loki glares at him and tries to smooth his hair, which Mamma refuses to fix for him, as if she _likes_ the way that his curls spring out all around his head. She had at least used pomade to tame them a bit, but he can’t help thinking he bears a striking resemblance to a yappy little dog. Running about with Brun with a bird’s nest for hair didn’t matter, but he wanted to make a good impression for his teachers. “I look stupid.”

His brother kneels in front them to fix a collar here, smooth a wrinkle there, and unkink one of the chains of Brun’s pectoral for him. “You look fine. You clean up well, gentlemen.”

Brun doesn’t know whether to glower or to smile, and the mix on his face is hilarious. It’s enough to pull Loki out of his sour mood, and he grins. “Oh yes, we’re perfect princes prancing like proper peacocking prats.”

Thor’s ridiculous honk of laughter earns him a sharp look from Pabbi, but Thor doesn’t much seem to mind. He winks at the two of them as the trumpets call from the entrance to the hall, signaling the arrival of Lady Groa and Sir Ragnvaldr.

Looking back on this moment later, Loki will realize that though he hadn’t really known what to expect, he thought at the very least that they would be tall, imposing figures of stunning power, magic crackling right under their skin. That outwardly, they would appear to be what they were – the most powerful magical users in the Nine Realms.

To put it diplomatically, they are not.

Lady Groa was a volva, witches of the most impossible and glorious power, so much so that they were heralded across the Nine for their sorcery and spellwork. She was also short, standing of an eye with Loki, and so bent and frail that it was clear only Sir Ragnvaldr’s arm was keeping her walking. She had wild, thin white hair that stood straight up all over her head, and the deeply set purple eyes that marked her as volva, though one had gone milky.

Sir Ragnvaldr, on the other hand, struck Loki quite speechless. He was a slight man, dark of hair and eye, and so wildly, unabashedly _ergi_ that Loki doesn’t know what to think or how to feel. His utterly flamboyant lavender silk robes, lined with white rabbit fur, swish around his ankles as he walks, and the dark amethyst gemstones woven into his long, coifed brown hair catch the firelight. At least a dozen rings twinkle on each hand, and tiny bells on his golden slippers chime with each step. Everything  _about_ him is merry, from his lilting, laughing voice, to the impish delight he clearly takes in the show he is putting on, bowing with a flourish to Mamma and Pabbi.

To be _ergi_ in Asgard was the deepest and ultimate shame, but Pabbi comes down from his throne and _embraces_ Sir Ragnvaldr, squeezing his forearms as they greet one another like old friends, which they certainly were if he had taught Loki for most of his life. Loki doesn’t know what to do, where to _look_ , his cheeks flaming because he had no idea his father would ever – that Otherness such as this would be _accepted_.

Loki makes the mistake of catching Thor’s eye, and the tenderness in his brother’s gaze freezes the air in his lungs. Thor knew who and what he was, though they had not spoken of it – Loki too embarrassed, too _shy_ to point out something they both knew. Thor arches a brow with a smile, darting his gaze to Pabbi once, as if daring Loki to recognize the acceptance in his father’s warm reception.

Before he has a chance to think on it, Sir Ragnvaldr turns his Sight on Loki, and Loki realizes that for all the humor in the man’s twinkling eyes and absurdity in his costume, he is standing before one of the most powerful seidmadrs in all the known universe. Brun shivers at his side, grabbing Loki’s hand tightly in terror. Loki knows they have nothing to fear, not really, but it is humbling to stand before one so powerful as Sir Ragnvaldr, to recognize that this man will teach them to one day surpass him in their power.

Sir Ragnvaldr crouches before them not unlike Thor had done, and plucks at their magic without a single word, like a musician at a harp. Loki feels tendrils of power he had no idea he possessed light up in his throat, his chest, his groin and the soles of his feet, and Brun’s grip is crushing now, trembling as he is trembling. Loki wants to tell him that they have nothing to fear, that for the first time since waking up in this future-not-future he feels _safe_ , but he thinks the words would be lost on his friend.

Sir Ragnvaldr looks first to Brun, and they speak without saying a word. Brun’s fear lessens, though his grip on Loki’s hand stays true. Loki can feel the vines of magic they’re trading, Sir Ragnvaldr’s light touch met by Brun’s, clumsy and unlearned, for all that this was something they were born to do. Sir Ragnvaldr says, “Golden ash?” and a tremulous smile ticks at Brun’s mouth. “Yes, _tryllekunstner_.”

The word startles a laugh from him. “That is not a title I’ve had for many years, young one, but it is fitting.”

Sir Ragnvaldr’s gaze turns to him and Loki meets his eyes, unflinching, though it is he who is now terrified. Sir Ragnvaldr must already know what a wicked boy Loki is, but such knowledge is small comfort when the full force of a seidmadr’s gaze is on him. It is only when Sir Ragnvaldr’s magic brushes the runes laid like a map over Loki’s body that Loki feels Sir Ragnvaldr’s curiosity turn to terrible surprise, then rage, and then to helpless, tearing grief. He feels it, and sees it, as tears fill the man’s eyes red. “Ymir save us,” he says softly, with such profound anguish Loki can’t flinch away from it, as much as he might want to. “Loki.”

Loki has the strangest, most curious sense of Sir Ragnvaldr gathering all of Loki’s magic up in his hands and studying it, though their eyes never leave one another’s, though neither of them move. Pabbi’s Hall falls away – Lady Groa’s angry voice, Mamma and Pabbi. Even the feeling of Brun’s fingers laced through his fades, until the only thing in the world is Sir Ragnvaldr and Loki.

 _I did not know it would be you,_ echoes in his ears. He recognizes Sir Ragnvaldr’s shock for what it is. _Dear one. There is no need to fear me._

 _I’m not afraid,_ Loki thinks, desperately.

_You’re trembling._

_You can see inside me. You can see the person I am._

_Yes, I can. Why does that frighten you?_

There can be no secrecy here. No hiding. To do so will only prolong this pain. _You will learn that I’m not a good boy. And when you tell them, they will send me back._

_Send you back? Where?_

_To the place I come from. When Thor was a boy like me._

He can feel Sir Ragnvaldr’s anger, though it is clear he is trying to hide it. _You think your father will send you to the past because of your naughtiness?_

_I am not naughty, sir. I am bad and cruel and full of mischief. I have tried to be good, tried to pretend, but they’ll find out. And when they do, they will not want me anymore._

Loki doesn’t want to go back. Not to that place, where he was constantly underfoot, where Thor yelled _mind your place_ , where Pabbi told him to _stop acting like a child_ , where Lady Hilda said _you must learn to listen_. Where his tormentors were rewarded for hurting him. Where he was forgotten, and nothing he ever said or did was worthy of praise or love.

 _Will you tell them? Please sir, I beg this of you, don’t. I will do anything to keep them from knowing. I – I would offer myself to you in any way you wish, if only you would keep this secret. Skildir_ _taught me many ways to please, and I can do the same for you._

The world lurches back with the flavor of Sir Ragnvaldr’s magic coating the back of his tongue, and Loki doesn’t burst into tears through iron will alone. Brun is at his side, restlessly stroking his arm and crooning to him, something strange and Jotun and lovely, and he doesn’t know why until he realizes he can smell himself, the stink of his own fear, can hear the shattering force of his teeth clacking together.

All it had taken was one look from this sorcerer to peel him open and leave him bleeding to death at his feet.

Sir Ragnvaldr stares at him for long, long moments, and when Loki whispers, “Please, sir,” the expression on his face shatters like glass. To see so much anger, and to know that it is directed at _him_ , makes Loki want to hide from the world.

Sir Ragnvaldr stands, one hand at Loki’s shoulder. “Allfather, I ask that you clear this Hall.”

Pabbi studies Sir Ragnvaldr for long moments, before Gungnir makes it so.

All leave the Hall, even – after Sir Ragnvaldr’s sharp look – the Warrior’s Three. Even Pabbi’s Einherjar. Even, with tears streaked down his cheeks, dear Brun, carted away by Lit with such devastation on his small face that Loki wishes he hadn’t seen it. Loki’s world is narrowed to a prick, but he can see Mamma’s desperate concern, Pabbi’s grip on Gungnir. Thor has Mjolnir in hand, and looks as if he is a minute away from murdering Sir Ragnvaldr where he stands.

Sir Ragnvaldr voice echoes in Loki’s head. _You robbed him of Valhalla._

Pabbi lifts his chin. _Yes._

_It was his time. Was it done for selfish means?_

_Yes._

Sir Ragnvaldr studies Pabbi, Odin Allfather, with such frankness that Loki wants to hide from it, from them – wants to clamp his hands over his ears. “You knew he had been plucked from the stars.”

“Frigga saw it.”

“This is why you came to me.”

“I knew of none other who could help conjure the dark magic needed. With the Bifrost destroyed, I could not retrieve him – only send Thor to where we knew he had been commanded.”

The Bifrost had been destroyed? Loki’s world lurches under his feet, and it is only Sir Ragnvaldr’s grip on him that keeps him standing. He thought it strange that the Bifrost looked so different, but he thought perhaps his father’s seidmadr’s had built on its magics, not that it had been _rebuilt_. But even that thought, so awful and strange, is second to –

What – what did Sir Ragnvaldr _mean_ , that he had been plucked from the stars?

Sir Ragnvaldr’s sharp gaze moves to Thor, whose confusion is falling away to horror. It is matched only by Mamma’s eyes.

“This will not be, Odin,” Sir Ragnvaldr says, with such force that Loki recoils underneath it. “I blindly followed you, once, allowed you to convince me that the secrets of his life were better kept. _This is not a mistake I will make again_.”

Loki has never seen his father so angry before, so full of rage that he looks like the gods from Loki’s books, terrible in his power. Just as quickly as the rage comes on him does it fall away, leaving his father hurt, and so _old_.

“Can you not see what you have done?” Sir Ragnvaldr asks. “When does this end, Allfather, King of Kings? That you have used the magic I gave you – magic of my own spirit, carved from me as easily as flesh and bone, never to return to me – to do this makes me _accomplice_.”

“Enough, Ragnvaldr,” Lady Groa says, and Loki startles when she cups his face with gnarled fingers. He’d forgotten she was here at all. They’re of a height, and he stares into her violet eyes for long seconds, helpless in the face of her kindness. “Ah, Loki,” she sighs, her fingertips papery thin and soft against his face, like the feathers that sometimes escape his pillows. “You have no reason to be frightened.”

“Yes, my lady,” Loki hears himself say, the jerking of swallowed tears strangling his voice.

“Dear child,” she says, so softly. “This conversation is not meant for small ears. The Allfather and Ragnvaldr have much to discuss, and I am an old lady in need of a rest. I would be shown my rooms, and ask for your escort.”

His eyes dart to Sir Ragnvaldr and Pabbi, Thor and Mamma. Loki recognizes their silence for what it is – they’re waiting for him to leave before saying anything more. It used to drive Thor crazy when Pabbi ordered them out of the Hall, as it was usually when something exciting was happening – a townsman stumbling into the Hall, blood-splattered and shrieking about a dragon, or the Einherjar throwing a caught murderer at Pabbi’s feet. Loki never really knew _why_ Thor got so mad, as oftentimes the reason Pabbi ordered them out was because it was too scary for them to be there, but Thor didn’t see it like that. He would holler and carry on and swing their wooden play swords with such force that sometimes they’d shatter, little splinters caught in the carpet of the nursery for weeks afterward and digging into bare toes.

He understands, now. As soon as he leaves Pabbi’s Hall, Sir Ragnvaldr is going to tell his family what an awful boy he is, and what they must do to guard themselves against him, and there isn’t a single thing he can do about it.

Lady Groa squeezes his hand and he offers her his elbow, ever the gallant prince he has been taught to be, even with the rock lodged in his throat choking him. “Of course, my lady. I would be happy to show you your rooms.”

 

.

Lady Groa’s quarters are in the wing of the palace reserved for dignitaries and heads of state. Loki would have puzzled out that particular honor in another time and place, but right now it’s taking all of his considerable restraint not to burst into tears and run away.

He had learned the skill of polite small talk at his mother’s knee, and he follows Lady Groa’s mindless chatter with half an ear as he helps her unpack her trunks. She has occupied one of the larger suites in this wing, where Loki remembers Pabbi always putting the dignitaries from Alfheim because they needed space for their workings. The suite has an enormous workshop, a study, and an enchanted doorway that led to a private pocket universe. When Loki chances a peek he sees a lush meadow under picturesque, snow-capped mountains, and deer grazing on blossoms under tree boughs swaying in the summer breeze.

She would use the ingredients she found in the pocket universe for her magic, Loki knows, but it would also be home to the dozen birds she’d brought with her, all rustling and fluttering in their golden cages in the sitting room. She had finches and cardinals and small fluffy owls, one of whom hooted at him when he got too close, and an enormous, dark brown hawk with a breast of white feathers and sharp golden eyes. Loki is drawn to the creature, to the intensity of it’s gaze, to the shiver of magic he feels when it tips its head to study him.

Lady Groa steps across the room to him, her robes rustling where they brush the floor.

“His name is Red.”

“Red? But there’s nothing red on him.”

“He is of Midgard. I heard his cry through the cosmos, and when I came to him he had been attacked by an eagle and was dying under a raging summer sun, his wings broken. I brought him home and mended him, because in him I felt a fierce warrior’s heart. A will to live as strong as fire.”

He stares at the majestic creature. “He is beautiful.”

Lady Groa suddenly laughs, wispy and soft. “He tells me to say thank you.”

“You hear his thoughts?”

“His intentions only. He is one of my familiars.”

“What is a familiar?”

Lady Groa smiles down at him. “When you look into an animal’s heart and feel a kinship.”

He can’t help but think of the shiver of magic he always felt when he looked into Sleipnir’s eyes. The way he could almost hear Sleipnir’s thoughts, feel his amusement. He feels that now with Red, in a way. “Did he heal? Can he fly, now?”

“He can,” Lady Groa says, and opens the cage door. Red walks along the branches in his cage until he can hop, lightly, onto the arm Lady Groa extends him. The massive talons should have cut into her thin, papery skin, but they don’t – and he doesn’t know if its care on Red’s part, or magic on Lady Groa’s. She gently runs the backs of her fingers through the white plumage at his breast, and encourages Loki forward with a smile. “He likes you, and invites you to stroke him, though asks you be mindful not to put his feathers into disarray.”

“Are you sure?” he asks, staring at Red’s massive beak. “He won’t bite me?”

“He likes to nip,” and at this Lady Groa gives Red a look, “but he won’t this one time, if you feed him one of the mice from his box.”

The dead mice smell awful, which thrills Loki to the core and makes him forget, for a moment, about what is happening in Pabbi’s Hall. When he offers one of the mice to the bird, held by one skinny tail, the hawk darts forward and snatches it from his fingers, gulping it in two swallows.

Lady Groa has him wait until Red settles back comfortably before allowing Loki to touch him, just a little bit, there along his breast. His feathers are downy-soft and scratchy all at once, and Red ruffles them a bit, like Loki’s touch tickles him. He strokes more firmly, then, and Lady Groa smiles, scritching Red along the top of his head.

“Did – did you teach the elder Loki for very long?”

“What an odd turn of phrase,” Lady Groa murmurs, and Red cocks his head at her as if in agreement, his sharp eyes blinking. “In all the long years I have practiced these arts, I’ve never quite come across a situation like this. Neither has Ragnvaldr.” She must see something in his gaze, something pleading and painful, because she sighs. “You may ask.”

“Why was Sir Ragnvaldr so mad?”

“You may ask anything but that.”

“Why?”

“Because Odin Borson must take some responsibility for the choices he has made.”

He chews on his lower lip. “He – he is my father.”

“Yes he is, in all the ways that matter,” Lady Groa says, and runs the backs of her fingers gently along his cheek. “I love you, Loki. I have always loved you, when you were a little boy running around my workshop and knocking over my vials, when you were a young man struggling with a spell that was just outside your reach, and when you were grown and brought me my favorite sweets from Alfheim. I loved you when you made the wrong choices, and when you suffered for them. And I love you now, even as I grieve for you.”

It’s not unlike what his mother had told him, or what was in Pabbi’s eyes every time they spoke. The grief of his older self, this phantom who haunted Loki’s every waking moment.

“That’s what everyone says,” he whispers, shuddering, and Red darts forward to pluck at his hair. Even that small touch isn’t enough to hold back the tears, and Loki stares down at his lap, chin trembling. “That’s what everyone says, that they grieve for me.”

“A blank slate, a life unlived.” Lady Groa tips his chin up, brushing his curls back from his face. “He was a good man. Lost, sometimes, as we all are. Prone to making the wrong decisions. But a good man, with a good heart.”

“No one will tell me what happened to him.”

“While it’s true that tragedy often inspires pretty words, this heartbreak is too fresh. In time, the story of Loki the Elder will pass into fable and epic poems will be written of his exploits. We are still bleeding on the battlefield, child. It is not yet time for song.”

Loki rubs his face on his shoulder, sniffling. He thinks of his journal hiding under the floor of his rooms, the furtive midnight scribblings. He doesn’t know if he can trust Lady Groa, but he thinks he must try, for his own sake. To make sense of the mess of his life. “I – I know, a little bit. Of what happened to him. But not the whole story.”

“You always were so clever. Too clever. I’m sure your new friend could learn from you. Isn’t that right, son of Byleistr?”

Loki hears a muffled thump from the door, and a yelp. One of Lady Groa’s handmaidens opens it to reveal Brun, crouched before the door and rubbing his eye.

“Brun! What are you doing here?”

His friend’s face flushes a shade of violet so intense that whatever anger Loki holds in his heart for the snooping melts. Brun shuffles into the room, wringing his hands in the tails of his kilt-belt and sending the stones woven into the fabric chiming against each other. He ducks his head and his small horns cast shadows over his face. “I’m sorry, Loki, Lady Groa.”

“As well you should be,” she says, though not unkindly. “It isn’t polite to eavesdrop at the cracks of doors.”

“Yes, Lady Groa. I just – I didn’t –”

“Stop stuttering and come in.”

Brun looks so miserable to have been caught that Loki takes pity on him, slipping his hand into Brun’s and pulling him into Lady Groa’s sitting room. The birds all flutter and ruffle their feathers, as if in response to the cold his friend emanates. Only Red seems unaffected, tipping his head curiously at this new creature with a look in his eye Loki can almost read.

Brun looks fabulously out of place among Lady Groa’s doilies and trunks and birdcages, and Loki thrills in it and in him, scooting close to him on the settee to lend him his strength. “I’m alright, Brun, honest.”

“You’re _not_ ,” Brun insists, wringing his hands together. “You had the fearstink, when _tryllekunstner_ talked to you. You’ve _never_ had the fearstink, not even the other day when we were almost caught in –” he darts a look at Lady Groa “—in the, _you know_.”

“Ymir save us from mischievous children,” Lady Groa sighs. She waves her handmaiden away and picks up the teapot herself, pouring a generous cup for each of them. As soon as the hot water touches the tea bags they release a citrus scent, something lovely and floral and unlike anything Loki has ever smelled before. “Neither of you have anything to fear from Ragnvaldr.”

Brun’s distrust is evident on his face, and Loki loves it, and him, so much. He’s never had a friend quite like Brun, someone who filled something in him that had been lost and alone for so long. Loki never could have dreamed that such a person would be waiting for him on the other side of the Bifrost, with his long black hair and small horns and big wide smile. He adores Brun utterly, and is adored in return, enough that his friend would risk Lady Groa’s anger in coming to spy at the door to her rooms like a common servant trying to hear gossip. He grins at Brun and Brun rolls his eyes, which somehow just makes it _better_. “I’m fine, Brun,” he says again, and squeezes him in a tight hug.

Brun gives him his patented unimpressed look, which should not be so funny on his lovely face. “You are sitting in a room of _birds_.”

“So?”

“They are _auguries_.”

“The only augury in this room, young one, is the poison you learned at Laufey’s knee,” Lady Groa says smartly.

“Jotunheim does not have birds for good reason. Birds are not to be trusted.”

“Jotunheim does not have sweetcakes – does that mean that sweetcakes are not to be trusted?”

The fact that Brun loves sweetcakes is not lost on Loki. “No!”

“But certainly they must be. Jotunheim does not grow wheat for flour, or yeast for bread. There are no trees for molasses or flowers for honey. If nothing about the sweetcake is natural to Jotunheim, then that makes them bad – and any Jotun who eats them will carry that augury with them forevermore.”

“But that’s not true!”

“Does it stand to reason then, princeling, that birds are no more an augury than sweetcakes?”

Loki can see his friend struggling with the idea – struggling against all he has been taught. Lady Groa takes Brun’s hand and laces their fingers together, guiding them both to Red’s plumage. Brun is as taut as a wire, terror in his dark red eyes, but as they stroke Red’s feathers together, and the bird preens with a low trill, the terror eases into confusion, and a strange longing Loki doesn’t understand. “What we perceive to be true is what we see and hear. You have lived your entire life thinking birds were harbingers of death, because that is what your people have told you – and why should you doubt them? They are older and wiser than you. And yet here you are, stroking the feathers of a Midgardian hawk. Here you are, understanding that birds are not bad omens but creatures like you and me, with a will to live, like you and me. Your hand has not erupted into boils, you have not plagued your family to death. You are petting a very spoiled bird who is, just now, telling me how lovely your touch is, cool as winter morning.”

Brun stares at Red. “Modir always tells me to think for myself. To stop listening to other people and make up my own mind.”

“Your modir is very wise.”

Brun turns his stare from Red to Lady Groa. “But how do I know what is truth and what are falsehoods?”

He feels the tickle of her magic skating along the surface of his own, and like Sir Ragnvaldr’s it is full of caring and warmth, certainty and belief in him. “By setting aside what you think you know, especially if that knowledge is fueled by emotion, and opening your mind and heart to other possibilities,” she replies, but her gaze is for Loki and Loki alone.

 

.

For all of Loki’s faults – and of those there are many – none could say that he did not comport himself a prince of Asgard.

The grand feast should have been a torture. Sitting at Pabbi’s high table with all of Asgard’s Court gathered together, the music, the boisterous laughter, the Hall should have been too much for Loki to tolerate, but he is numb to the center of himself. He watches, as if standing outside his body, as he smiles in all the right places, and laughs when Brun makes silly faces at him, and even as he stands and speaks his prepared speech for his professors, thanking them for returning to Asgard to teach him anew. He eats heartily, and speaks at all the right times, and doesn’t make the mistake of asking his _why_. He’s learned his lesson.

Pabbi watches him in that steady way he has and Loki thinks he wishes to speak, but something holds him back time and again. The secrets of who Loki _was_ and _is_ and _would be_ are like cards on a table, waiting to be overturned, but neither his parents nor Thor seem willing to. Seem _able_ to. So Loki asks Mamma to pour him more juice, and laughs when Thor tells an outrageous story of their exploits as young men, and doesn’t remark once on how the Loki in Thor’s story is a stranger. Or maybe the stranger is him.

Mamma walks him back to his suite, and helps him undress and bathe, and brushes his hair until all his curls come unspooled and turn to fluff around his head. She works a pomade into them, the smell of jasmine sweet on the nose, and then tucks him into bed, kissing him once, twice, three times.

“I love you Loki,” she murmurs, and for all that the House of Odin is built on a tower of lies, his mother’s love is one of his steadfast truths.

He waits until the rustling of her skirt fades, until the footsteps of servants slows. He waits until the moons have come up over Asgard and bathed it in white light, until Pabbi’s crows have come and gone as they do every night, checking in on him – or perhaps just checking to make sure he’s where he’s supposed to be. He waits, until all is silent and the cool night wind is on his cheek, and then Loki creeps out of his bed and across his room as silently as possible, to his secret cubby hole.

When he lifts the floorboard, a scroll with the Allfather’s seal is sitting almost gently atop Loki’s treasures.

Loki stares down, uncomprehending. His hands are shaking so badly he wants to slam the floorboard down and go racing back to his bed.

The seal breaks with a small flare of gray magic. Pabbi’s magic.

_My son,_

_Come to me when you read this note. I will be in my study tonight._

_Father_

Loki knows well enough that it is not a request.

His father often worked well into the night, as it was the quietest time in the palace and he would remain undisturbed, so Loki is unsurprised to see the sconces lit down the hall leading to Pabbi’s study. His father’s space was as familiar to him as the nursery, from the heavy leather journals lined up like soldiers on the recessed shelves behind his writing desk, to the comfortable chairs in front of the crackling fire in the hearth. The smell of his father, woodsmoke and umber and something uniquely him, permeates this sanctum. A smell Loki could never mistake, even if the man seated at the desk had white hair instead of gold.

“Sire, the prince,” says the Einherjar who opens the door for him, and when Pabbi looks up Loki feels about two feet tall. That feeling doesn’t go away when Pabbi beckons him enter, when he says, “One moment, my son,” and the scratch of his pen seems to echo against the tapestries lining the walls.

Pabbi makes him wait and it’s awful, the _worst_. He knows why Pabbi asked him to come _here_ specifically, and the book Loki is holding seems to weigh a million pounds. He’s almost shaking when Pabbi finally sets his pen down.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts.

His father smiles. “For what?”

“Taking your – I took your book. I put it in my tunic when you weren’t looking and I took it from your study, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to and I didn’t understand most of it anyway, and I’m – I’m sorry, Pabbi, and I promise I won’t do it ever again.”

Loki _hates it_ when Pabbi studies him just like he’s doing now, because it usually meant he knew there was much more to Loki’s mischief and he was deflecting. Loki had been trying to hoodwink his father since he learned to speak, which was _ridiculous_ , he should have learned by now that  _nothing_ got past his father.

“I must ask for your forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” Loki squeaks. “That’s not the way this works, Pabbi.”

“Oh? And how does it work?”

“I stole your book! I’m supposed to be sorry, and I _am_.”

“You’re sorry that you were caught,” and well, that’s true, and Loki has been taken over his father’s knee for far less, so he can’t really help the flinch when Pabbi stands from his desk. A curious expression crosses his father’s face, but when he sits in his favorite chair before the fireplace he doesn’t seem angry, nor does he beckon Loki forward for his punishment. Instead he takes Loki’s hand, gently, and the book as well, though he sets it on his side table without looking at it. “I have not called you here to punish you for taking a book from my office. You are my son, a sovereign prince of Asgard, and second in line to the highest throne in the Nine Realms. I would no more deny you a book of mine than I would deny you bread from my hand.”

He has never heard his father talk like this. When Pabbi called him to his study it was because Loki was in trouble – and he was so _often_ in trouble. The last time he’d been here in the Before Time, his backside smarting and tears clogging his throat, his father had looked at him with such a severe countenance that Loki knew for the first time that though his father loved him, he didn’t like him very much.

 _That_ Pabbi and _this_ Pabbi don’t even seem like the same person.

He doesn’t know what to say, and Pabbi tugs Loki gently to him. “Come, my son. There is room enough for both of us.”

Loki has never gotten to do this before, not _ever_ , and certainly not in the Before Time. Loki wasn’t even allowed in Pabbi’s study then but for scolding, but now – now it’s as if Pabbi _wants_ him to be there. Loki has spent more time in this room since he woke up in this world than in all the years before it combined, and – and – “I love your study,” he says in a rush, as he wiggles into the chair beside his father. It’s a tight fit, but then Pabbi puts his arm around him and suddenly it’s just right. They fit so well here together, and his father sighs, propping his feet up on the ottoman so that the fire can warm his slippered feet. “I love being here with you, even when I’m in trouble.”

He feels Pabbi’s laughter before he hears it, the low burr of his chest vibrating through him. “You have always been the most mischievous of my children. Just as you have always been the most prone to melancholy.”

Loki bites his lip. It’s easy, tucked under Pabbi’s arm, tucked against his side, to confide in his father. “Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be angry?”

“I – I stole those things. In my hiding place.”

“A boy’s treasures are his to do with as he chooses,” Pabbi says, running his fingers gently through Loki’s hair. “I do not mind that you have your keepsakes, ill begotten or not, when I know that it was done out of love. I care about the boy in that journal, and the anguish he hides behind his sweet smile.”

He clenches his eyes closed. “You read my journal?”

“I went looking for my book, as it is one of the only ones left that name the Titans of old,” Pabbi says, and Loki ducks his head so Pabbi won’t see his shame. “I have marked all the books in my library with a magic sigil, to never misplace them. The sigil led me to my youngest son’s rooms, and to my surprise, the hiding place for his treasures. I didn’t know what it was, until I’d read the first page.”

Loki worries the hem of Pabbi’s tunic between his fingers. “Are you mad at me?”

“No.”

Loki looks up at his father but Pabbi’s eye is far away, and so filled with grief Loki can’t bear to see it. Knows he’s seeing his son, the Loki who was grown, who died when Pabbi reached into the past and plucked Loki like an apple from a tree, pulling him here and now. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Pabbi says again, low. “Do you remember, when I told you that all kings make mistakes?”

“You said you could fill a library with them.”

“There is a part of that library that is filled with the mistakes I’ve made with you. I realize now that the truth should have been given to you, freely, when you were a boy as you are now. I was overprotective, trying to shield you against further pain. A father always wants to protect his children against that which will hurt them, even when the blooding is necessary.”

“Is the – is the truth really that awful, Pabbi?”

“No. No, my son, it is not awful at all, for all that it is a tragedy,” his father murmurs, studying him for long moments. “Have I ever told you the story of how Sleipnir came to me?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Would you like to hear it?”

“You _are_ the best at telling stories, Pabbi.”

“Well, then.”

Pabbi goes quiet for long moments, gathering his thoughts, and his fingers feel so nice running through Loki’s mop of hair, and it’s so warm and cozy here, especially when Pabbi pulls the blanket over the back of the chair over him.

Tucked away from the world, with only the fire to light their way, Loki feels enveloped by his father’s love.

“Many years ago, eons it seems to those who lived it, the Aesir went to war with the Vanir. I was a young lad no older than Thor is now, and ready for conquest. Also not unlike Thor, I had a band of comrades dear to me. My brothers, Ve and Villi, a decade younger than me and skinny as rails; Heimdall, not yet of the Watch and wild as a tiger; and my dearest friend in all the realms, and your namesake, the warrior Loki.”

He sucks in a startled breath. “I didn’t know I was named for one of your shield brothers.”

“He was a trickster through-and-through, and oftentimes I think that the power of his name gave you some of your own impish ways,” Pabbi says, smiling down at him, and Loki grins. “My father, your grandfather Bor, had gone to war with the Vanir after centuries of unrest turned the peaceful realm of Vanaheim into a place of butchery and massacre, such that my father could no longer condone. My friends and I were restless with energy in the days leading up to our call to the Front, making a nuisance of ourselves to all the Vanir villages between us and what we thought would be our first glorious battle.”

Loki can’t help but think of the story Thor had told him, of his own impatient battle thirst and the innocents he and the Warriors Three had slaughtered. “Were you getting in trouble?”

“Terrible trouble, especially the twins, who when spurred on by Loki got into the most ridiculous mischief. It became such a problem that my father demanded that we make ourselves useful and build additional battlements between the cluster of river valley villages and the Front, to protect the women and children who had fled the areas where the Vanir were making their stand. Loki had what, in hindsight, was a terrible idea – rather than do the work ourselves, we could hold a contest of might. We put out word that whichever builder could put up the battlements first would win the hand of Lady Freyja, my cousin and the Lady of the Lake, who had a birthright larger than the Vanir city of Hollander and enough gold to build a palace to rival Asgard.”

“That is _awful_ Pabbi.” And not least because it was well known that Lady Freyja had unmanned many a potential suitor in a most permanent fashion, rather than wed against her will.

“Thor comes by his stupidity honestly,” Pabbi says with a snort.

Loki grins. “So what happened?”

“Well, it was quite the boon, wasn’t it? The hand of the Lady of the Lake, gold besides, and a title? Soon enough there were builders of all kinds streaming into the river valley ready to test their mettle, but only one impressed us. Going by the name of Svadilfari, the Builder of the North, the man boasted that he would build a wall in half the time than any other. None believed him, until he built a firepit in under an hour that could both warm half the camp and cook twelve boars. After so impressive a feat, and full of boar, Loki said that we ought to let Svadilfari enter the contest, despite our feeling that the man was using seidr that would crumble to dust as soon as he left. We gave all the contestants the rules, foremost of which was that none could have help from any man, woman or child. We should have been clearer in our direction.”

“Did he cheat?”

“Not precisely. Svadilfari operated within the parameters of the contest, if not the spirit – we woke up the first morning of the build, and saw he’d tacked an enormous black stallion with balls the size of bricks and a temper to match to pull his stoneware.”

Loki bursts into peals of laughter. “Pabbi!”

But his father is grinning. “He was a mean one, by the name of Gylfaginning. Svadilfari insisted he had not broken any rules, and it was true enough. Loki, who despite having nary a drop of seidr in him, said from the start that he thought Gylfaginning might have been enchanted, but none of us were smart enough to work out how. Svadilfari made such quick progress that it soon became apparent to all who had entered the contest that Svadilfari would soon build his wall and theirs too, just as it became apparent who was to blame for the loss of the lady’s hand and more importantly her gold – Loki. The contestants thought for certain that our trickster friend had rigged the contest so that we would be housed and watered in the villages, and had dangled a prize such as Lady Freyja before the men-folk to let the fields go fallow.

“We soon realized that, Asgardian or not, we were in real trouble. We couldn’t hack away at the villages, because though we were formidable warriors, they outnumbered us fifteen to one. Mostly, the brothers Bor couldn’t face their father if they were chased out of the river valley by peasants with pitchforks. To soothe tempers, Loki said he would uncover the deceit, for surely Svadilfari was an old god of some kind, and his horse a demon. So Loki did what Loki always did – created mischief.”

Loki finds he rather likes his namesake. “What did he do?”

“Ah, well. He reckoned that an ungelded horse such as Gylfaginning, ornery though he was, could not resist a mare in her time. Of course there were many peasants willing to have their mares foaled by the likes of a stallion as magnificent as Gylfaginning. The problem was that ornery horse that he was, Gylfaginning didn’t so much as twitch an ear when the mares whinnied. Desperate, Loki brought three mares before Gylfaginning, and three times did Gylfaginning turn his nose up at them. That was irrefutable proof that magic was afoot.”

“You thought Svadilfari was a seidrmadr, and had cast a spell on Gylfaginning?”

“Exactly right. Our honor, tattered rag that it was, had been tarnished beyond bearing. In his fury Loki disappeared, and for twenty days and twenty nights he roved the Vanir countryside looking for a mare of special type and breed, with a touch of seidr about her and who we knew would get through whatever enchantment Svadilfari had put over the stallion. The story of the volva Loki came across in this adventure is another story entirely. Needless to say, the volva was not much willing to be parted from her mare, a lovely roan palfrey of brown mane and coat. It took him and Heimdall another week to steal the horse from under the volva’s nose – I did tell you we were louts in those days, child – and bring her to the river valley. We knew Loki had been successful before we even saw him, because Gylfaginning became so agitated that even liberal application of the lash could not control him. When he broke free to give chase, Svadilfari went right after him, and that set the pattern for the night – the mare running and screaming, Gylfaginning right after her, Svadilfari chasing the lot, and the five of us oafs following. By the time Svadilfari caught up to the beast, it was too late. And that was when we uncovered the cruel deception that Svadilfari had made us party to.

“Svadilfari, on his knees and wailing, furious and frothing at the mouth, told us the entire sorry tale. Gylfaginning was not a normal stallion – he was the enchanted King Gylfi, the king who had been kidnapped by bandits on the road to Hollander almost two centuries before. All of his warriors had been murdered and no trace of him had ever been unearthed, but the loss of such a strong and fair king had sent the realm of Vanaheim into a spiral, causing the civil war that my father was there to stop.”

Loki stares up at his father, wide-eyed. Lady Hilda had told him and Thor the story of King Gylfi many times, and they had spent days one long summer thinking up ways to save the poor old king. “What did you do?”

“We were horror-struck. There we were, like idiots, watching him mount a mare as if he were a common horse and not the Lost King of Vanaheim. By the time Svadilfari ran out of words the mare had been foaled with, for all intents and purposes, a child of Vanir royalty.”

“Oh no, Pabbi.”

“I didn’t know what to do. Villi wanted to recall Father at once – Ve said he’d rather throw himself off the edge of Asgard. Heimdall, with an unusual eloquence in those days, managed to break through our panic and laid out what, in hindsight, was a brilliant plan – find someone who could break an enchantment such as had been laid on King Gylfi, and protect the mare and her foal at all costs.”

Loki, rapt, wiggles up enough so he can stare at his father. “Did you find someone who could?”

“After some liberal application of my fists, Svadilfari told us how he had come to be in possession of the king. He was not King Gylfi’s first owner, nor his second, fifth, or tenth, because the stallion was mean as a snake – as any king would be, to be left an enchanted horse for so long. Svadilfari had come by the horse in a game of dice. At that point King Gylfi had been missing for over a century, his name passing on into myth and legend, but Svadilfari had a bit of seidr himself and he knew right away that the horse had a curse laid over him. After consulting with several warlocks, he came to piece together the story of the ornery horse, and discovered who he was.”

Loki gasps. “The lowly toad!”

“Just-so. Svadilfari agreed to give us the horse. But not before my father arrived in the river valley to find out why there was talk all over Vanaheim of the Borsons and a magical horse.”

Not even quickly slapping a head over his mouth can stop his giggles, and Pabbi’s eye crinkles at the corner. “Oh no Pabbi.”

“Oh yes. To say my father was furious is perhaps an understatement, and he sent us back to Asgard to deal with the situation, the mare and the king in tow. Despite our very best efforts, no magic user was ever able to turn the king back into, well, a king. My brothers thought it was because he had gone too wild and forgotten he was a person, but I think the old king just didn’t want to be bothered – the responsibility of a civil war, the exhaustion of almost a century of back-breaking labor. He was content to spend the rest of his days as a horse, in the royal stables with the mare and his young son, who had been born with a bit of magic about him.”

Suddenly it all makes perfect sense.

“Sleipnir,” Loki breathes.

Pabbi smiles his gentle smile, and tweaks Loki’s earlobe. “Prince Sleipnir, after a fashion. A creature born of magic, and sharply intelligent, but a horse born of a stallion and a mare nevertheless, extra legs notwithstanding.”

“Is that why he’s yours?”

“It is. Sleipnir has proven to have the best of his parents – he is stubborn and quick to anger, like his father, but there is a temperance of spirit in him that is his mother’s disposition. He is a warrior prince, born of a long line of warriors kings, and I trust him with my life.”

The crackle of the fire is loud, merry where it is warming their toes. Loki turns the story over and over in his mind, like a river-rock grown smooth in the palms of his hands. His father has never told him such a story, and all he has learned this night tumbles about in his mind. He almost can’t decide which question to ask first. Almost. “Pabbi, I knew that Heimdall was your friend in your youth, but why did you never tell me of Loki?”

“Because it is painful, even now, to think of him.”

Pabbi’s arm is warm and heavy over Loki’s shoulders, and when he pulls Loki closer, _cuddles_ him, it feels so different and so good. The Pabbi in the Before Time never cuddled him, never tweaked his ears or tugged on his curls, or touched him or held him, not like this Pabbi does. It wasn’t that Pabbi didn’t love him, didn’t show him affection, didn’t hug him so tightly sometimes his whole body felt squished up in his arms, but this Pabbi is older and maybe – and maybe feels easier in showing his love in these moments, when they weren’t king and prince, but father and son. Loki feels overcome with joy thinking about it, and burrows closer to his father so that Pabbi knows how much he likes it because, Loki knows, sometimes even grown-ups were uncertain.

“I lost Loki during the War of Jotunheim,” Pabbi says, softly. “My father had died in battle a decade before, during the war with the dark elves. My modir never recovered from the loss, and took ill. When the Jotnar started to skirmish on Midgard, and war became imminent, the horror of what was to come became too much to bear. He passed away in his sleep the eve before I was to take my armies to Jotunheim.”

Loki opens his eyes. There is quiet for a time, but for the crackling from the fire. “Your modir?”

“Mmm.”

His heart kicks in his chest. “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.”

He stares into the fire, unable to – “Pabbi, your modir was a Jotun?”

“He was.”

Loki doesn’t know what to think, what to say. His thoughts are scrambling around each other, because if – if Pabbi is half Jotun, then Loki is Jotun too, but if Pabbi was half Jotun he had kept the light of their world locked in his vault – but if he hadn’t the Jotnar would have attacked Midgard and destroyed them, and Loki _liked_ the Midgardians, but – but Brun had told him about the _sakna,_ the loss and grief and the dying of their world, and – and did that mean that Thor was a Jotun too? He has so many questions he doesn’t know where to start, doesn’t know what Pabbi will answer, and suddenly understands how _awful_ it is to be King.

“You know the story, from your studies. The Jotnar had made war on Midgard, and the Aesir rose up to answer to cries of the humans, infants in their history and unable to protect themselves. What you perhaps don’t know is that King Laufey was a fanatical purist, one who believed that Jotun blood should not mix with the blood of the other peoples of the Nine, if the Jotnar were to remain an unblemished race. He attacked Midgard to provoke me, as he had grown to hate Asgard, hate my father, hate his sibling who had married into the House of Bor, and above all else, hate his nephews, who he saw as blasphemous reminders of Bestla’s choice.”

Loki stares into the fire, overwhelmed and unable to speak.

Pabbi had been King Laufey’s nephew. Pabbi was half Jotun. Pabbi’s mother had been King Laufey’s sibling.

Brun was Loki’s best friend, but also his blood.

“For those of us who lived during that time, we called it the First Purge. King Laufey began to quietly gather all those who were mixed peoples – parents who were not both of Jotun descent – in Utgard, for a festival to honor the expansion of the Jotun race. And so the Jotun came, their children in tow, and at the height of the festival he turned his warriors against his own people. Fifteen thousand souls were slaughtered without mercy, and it is said that the snow ran red with blood for twenty days and twenty nights. And when he was done, he turned his eyes to Midgard, and using the Paths of the Tree walked his army into the center of that small and innocent realm to slaughter any Jotun who had settled there as well. These were acts of war, my son. I had sworn, at my father’s knee, to uphold and protect the Nine Realms when I became King of Asgard. Such an oath could not be broken.”

It is awful to hear, _awful_ , and Loki thinks of what Brun had told him, the guilt of the old king which had turned to madness, and wasn’t this madness? Slaughtering thousands, for something that was no fault of their own?

“And so we went to war, my brothers at my side, Loki and Heimdall at each shoulder. We fought valiantly, as the men we had become and not as those ridiculous boys on Vanaheim. Loki was killed in one of the first campaigns, protecting my flank. Ve was cut down at the height of the war. I lost my eye in the last forward push, and it was only Sleipnir’s light hooves that kept me from losing my head.

“In one of our final attempts at diplomacy, before the start of the war, Laufey accused me of being a warmonger like my father, and he was right. But oh, my son, how I hated it. I hated warring on my modir’s people, and I hated what I knew I had to do to control King Laufey and keep his madness from spilling out to the other Realms. I hated that I could be so cold, so unfeeling, when I knew the suffering the Jotnar people – _my_ people – would endure.”

Loki almost can’t breathe. There is a weight in the air, a terrible feeling of foreboding. Suddenly, Loki doesn’t want to hear the rest of this story. “Pabbi.”

His father squeezes his shoulder and Loki wraps his arms around his father’s waist, hugging him as tightly as he can. “I would never wish the kingship on either of my children,” his father whispers into his hair, and Loki nods against his father’s shoulder. He understands. “I must tell you the rest, Loki, as I should have done many years ago. Will you hear it?”

“Is it awful, Pabbi?”

Pabbi nods. He takes Loki’s hand gently in his own, resting there on his middle, which had grown large over the years and which Loki loved to see, evidence of Pabbi’s good health. “I had battled long and hard, pushing at King Laufey’s flank as Villi pushed at the other. Laufey’s lines had started to crumble, but the turn came when a blizzard bombarded Utgard. It was not natural, this storm, and seemed to rise and fall like a scream. We had no idea what could be causing it, and not even the warrior seidrmadrs could explain it. It ceased after only a few hours, and with it the bravery of the Jotun warriors. I could do nothing but press the advantage. We fought like demons for three days, pushing through the line which had held in Utgard for over a year, slaughtering all the Jotnar in our path. We fought to the last man, until Villi came to me and said that King Laufey had been taken prisoner in the Keep, and I knew the war was finally over.

“I was overcome. I had never known such battle, had never felt one weigh so heavily. My decisions had cost so many their lives, and I am ashamed to say that I broke under their weight. The horror of what I had caused, the pain I would have to inflict on an entire people, was more than I could bear. I knew then of a loathing so deep and so interminable that I didn’t think I would ever break free of it.”

Pabbi stops suddenly, as if unable to speak, and Loki knows sometimes that older people, grown people, were overwhelmed by sadness not for themselves or their families, but for the tragedy of impossible choices. It’s hard to see his father, so proud and powerful and strong, and to know that beneath the hardness of the crown is a man who hurts for millions of beings across the Nine Realms, who shoulders an impossible responsibility too great for any one man. “What did you do, Pabbi?”

“I wished – I wished to beg forgiveness at the altar of the old gods. The Jotnar were a people of faith, but the war had been fierce, and unkind. The Temple on the Mount had been ransacked weeks before, half-destroyed, but I felt a tremendous pull to go there, to ask the old gods their forgiveness in these atrocities I had committed, to try to find some peace in what I had done. And when I entered that most hallowed hall, I found a baby, newly born and squalling, lying atop the crumbling worship pedestal.”

“A baby?”

“A tiny thing, so very small for a Jotun, with a crown of leylines at its brow. A princeling, of Laufey’s house, of Laufey’s line, but tiny, naked and shivering, left abandoned in the temple to die of exposure. On that pedestal I saw proof of Laufey’s madness – to leave his first-born prince, to leave his _child_ , to die in the hands of the old gods for daring to be born different and by Laufey’s own impossible standards, impure, was confirmation to my heart what my head already knew. I had done the just thing, to war on Jotunheim. And do you know, the most curious thing happened when I took the baby into my arms.”

Pabbi’s fingers tingle in his, the way Loki’s do when he’s cold. Except the tingles don’t stop, and as Loki watches Pabbi’s skin washes into the blue of his ancestry, traveling up his wrist into his tunic, across his face when Loki stares up at him in wonder. Pabbi’s skin is a lighter blue than Brun’s, though no less a brilliant cobalt, and his eye is the same ruby-red. At his brow is a raised semi-circle, the same that Brun and Lord Byleistr had, and Loki stares at it with wonder. Something in Loki’s heart that has cried out with a fierce and painful longing, something he hadn’t understood or been able to name for all the years he has been alive, goes peaceful and still. He hears himself croon, the same – the same sound as Brun, when he tried to comfort Loki, and he doesn’t understand until he _does_.

The world goes white and blank and Loki stares down at their entwined hands resting on Pabbi’s middle. Slowly, as if a dream, the blue bleeds into Loki’s skin, traveling gently up his wrist. A darker shade, and yet the exact same hue. The ice comes up in his blood, his lungs and the back of his throat, and all of a sudden the shadows in Pabbi’s study come alive. He can see the names of the books in the darkest corners of the room, can see the curving spine of the cat who lives in Pabbi’s study and feasts on the mice that plague the palace proper, asleep behind Pabbi’s sofa. But more – more than that – Loki can sense the rain coming by week’s end, can taste the salt in the air, can feel the currents against the raised lines on his forearms and behind his ears. He knows which direction is _north_.

“Our people are seafarers,” Pabbi says, and his voice rumbles like Lord Byleistr’s does. “Did you know that?”

Loki finds he can’t catch his breath. His chin is wobbling fiercely, but Pabbi is smiling his soft smile, and he still looks like Pabbi, and feels like Pabbi, and _smells_ like Pabbi, and his touch is so gentle when he cuddles Loki close to him. Loki buries his face at his father’s shoulder, squeezing him so tightly, and Pabbi runs his hand over Loki’s back gently, a wave up and down. “Most of Jotunheim is a saltwater ocean, and so the Jotnar learned, over time immortal, to tame the wild waters of their world. They are explorers above all else, restless in their way. That is why you and young Brun get on so well. You have always been a curious boy, always looking for the next adventure.”

“Pabbi,” Loki whispers, and tears escape though he doesn’t mean them to, trembling down his face. “Pabbi.”

“I went to that temple to beg forgiveness from the old gods, and I found you. A beautiful baby born too small, whose mad-king of a father had abandoned him and left him to die. A child of my blood, and the son of my heart. You turned pink in my arms,” and a pale flush crawls over the blue of their entwined hands, and now Loki recognizes the old sword calluses on his father’s palm, the rough, swollen joints of a life hard-lived, “and I knew then that you had been born to another of my family, but you had come into this world to be my son. I named you Loki, in honor of the fierce Jotun warrior who had been at my side since we were children.”

Loki is shaking so hard it’s only Pabbi’s touch that is keeping him in one piece. He doesn’t know what to think, or what to say, or how to feel. He is his father’s blood, but not his son – and yet he is, by word and deed. He is Jotun, and he is Aesir, a child of two worlds. Brun is his blood. Pabbi is his blood. Thor is his blood, too. All of them are family, and now – now Loki knows why Pabbi let Thor give the Jotnar back the heart of their world. King Laufey died, and Helblindi took the throne, and with him started a new chapter of the Nine Realms.

It is overwhelming to think about, that – that he is adopted, that Pabbi is his cousin by blood, that he took Loki from the frozen plain when his own father did not want him. It answers so many of his questions, too, and he feels for the first time a peace in himself, a _centering_ of himself, as all that had always been so different about him begins to slowly fall into place. He tries to untangle it in his mind, and Pabbi never stops stroking his back, slow up-and-downs.

“Pabbi, what did – you took me home? Did everyone know?”

“Your uncle did. He was the second to look upon you and love you. So too did Heimdall know, and he helped me get you to Asgard safely. I had asked Heimdall for some time to serve as my Watcher, but always he refused. Even after Thor’s birth, he was not ready. I often think that he was waiting for you, because it was after I brought you to Asgard that he agreed.”

“And – and Mamma? What did – I was another baby, a baby that – that wasn’t hers,” and here Loki feels the tears come back up his throat, because Mamma is one of the pillars of his world, and his love for her is so strong that to think maybe – maybe she doesn’t love him the same, makes him want to curl up into a little ball.

“My son, she is your mother in all but blood,” Pabbi tells him, softly. “The first time your mother looked at you she became caught in the web of her Seeing, as she sometimes does. Two days and two nights she was caught, and when finally she came free of it, she turned to me and said that the missing piece of her had finally been found.”

He knows all of that, but to hear it spoken, to know there is unshakable proof that he is loved and wanted, makes something old and painful in him finally ease. Loki chews on his lower lip to stop the trembling in his chin. “There is a – I have a modir, too.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Yes,” Pabbi says. “Yes, he still lives. He is modir to Helblindi and Byleistr, your natural siblings. He is called Farbauti.”

Loki’s world goes swimmy and awful, like sometimes after he’s been sick.

He is brother to Helblindi, the king of Jotunheim. He is brother to Byleistr. Brun is his nephew.

He is a prince of the house of Laufey. He is Laufeyson.

“Did…did he want me?”

“Do you remember when I told you that there was an unnatural storm, the days of our final push into Utgard?”

“Yes.”

“All Jotun are born with the ability to call across wind and storm, but few are born with the power to focus it, to manipulate nature, to use the elements to their own ends. I think – I think that when you were born, Farbauti fought for you in the only way he knew how.”

Loki feels like he’s broken in two. _This_ world and _that_ world, and he, caught in the middle. A modir who had loved him so much that he had destroyed Jotunheim’s chances of winning the war to end all wars, and a mother who had taken in the son of her enemy and loved him with her entire heart.

Pabbi hugs him tightly and he – he realizes he isn’t _alone_ , that Pabbi is in the middle too, a prince of two worlds, for all that he is King of Asgard. Pabbi is Jotun too, and Loki doesn’t know how he will ever survive knowing this, when it is rewriting all he thought he knew about himself.

He is _Loki_ , he has always _been_ Loki, only now so many things make sense. Things he hadn’t understood about himself, about the way he was, about the call of the wind and the way he could hear the music in it, about how he wanted to explore the branches between the worlds, and even the way he could sense so much about Asgard that no one else seemed to be able to. He is just different, he is _Jotun_ , and – and – and there is so much joy in him, so much relief, to know that there is an explanation for why he did things the way he did, and thought the way he did.

Pabbi is studying him, watching as if Loki is going to begin screaming and carrying on any minute. And Loki _is_ crying, a little, but it’s joy and relief and understanding. His skin goes cold again, blue flushing up his arms, and Pabbi’s does too, and Loki is maybe crying more than just a little bit because he touches his own forehead and it matches the crown of leylines at Pabbi’s brow. “I am so different, Pabbi. I had no explanation, and everyone always said so many bad things about my differentness, but _I’m not different at all_. I’m Jotun, and that’s why I am the way I am. That’s why I’m Other. Only I’m not Other at all, it’s just normal because I’m Jotun and there aren’t men and women, there are just Jotun and they are both men and women together.”

The smile his father gives him is like the rising sun. “Yes, Loki.”

“And sometimes when I think differently than Thor, it’s not because I’m strange or – or peculiar or anything like that, I’m just Jotun. And so I think differently, but that’s a good thing too because Thor is Thor and needs help usually when he’s planning things.”

Pabbi is crying a little now too, but Loki knows it isn’t for sadness, not really. “Yes,” he says, and cups Loki’s face in both of his hands. “Yes, Loki, that’s exactly the way of it.”

“And I’m your son, because you took me when the mad king did not want me.”

“You are my son,” Pabbi says, and hugs him so hard his bones creak and his ribs complain, only Loki finds he’s hugging his father just as tightly, burying his face there at his cheek. “You are my son, and will always be my son, and nothing I could ever say would be enough to convey the depth of my love for you.”

Loki feels lighter than he has in so long – _free_ in a way he never thought he could be. Joyful.

“I’m so glad the old gods called you to the temple, to be my father,” Loki says, and Pabbi is crying more than a little bit now too, and he says, “My dear child,” in that way he does sometimes when Loki has done something amazing, and he feels it too in his heart and in his soul.

 

.

Loki dreams of the man with the sewn mouth for the last time that night, tucked close to his father in front of the crackling hearth.

There is a hush all around him but for the forest, rustling in the cool breeze. Crisp leaves turned orange and red and nearly ready to fall glint like gems from their boughs. Under his hands the soft, prickling detritus of a forest floor, dirt under his nails and leaves a mush between his fingers, is soft as satin. He breathes in the scent of green things, of water, of dirt and growth. The mother star can’t hope to prick its way through the canopy above, and the light reflects the greenyellowred of a forest in fall. It is cold here, for the tunic and leggings he wears, but it is not the wind finding its way under his collar that makes him shiver.

The man sits cross-legged on the forest floor before him. His hair is a riot of curls around his face, long past his shoulders, as black as the macabre stitches that have sewn his ravaged mouth shut. His hands are face-up on his lap, empty. Loki marvels at them, at the length of his fingers, at the discoloration at the tips that speak to his craft. The man is a seidmadr. His eyes are a bright, bright green where he watches Loki.

In his pocket Loki knows he will find a dagger. It is familiar and unfamiliar, and it calls to him, whispering his name.

He stands and those eyes follow him, though the man isn’t afraid, not even when Loki kneels next to him. He cups the man’s chin and gently turns his head, and finds the skin under his fingers cold as ice.

 _I will free you_ , he saysthinksfeels. _There will be pain_.

That ravaged mouth curves, just a tiny bit, and blood threads down the man’s chin.

Loki understands. No pain could be worse than what has already been inflicted.

It is careful, precise work, and Loki’s small hands were made for the task. Each thread is gently cut and pulled free. The blood sheets down, down, down, over the man’s throat down to the hollow, until red spreads across the front of his dark tunic. Loki cuts, and cuts, and cuts, as gently as he can, and when his hands are slippery with blood he wipes them onto the forest floor. The trees grow restless, agitated around him, and Loki thinks of blood sacrifices and old spells and wonders at the magic of this place.

In the seidmadr’s eyes is _fear_ , a terror born of knowing what creeps in the dark. The leaves rustle and branches sway in the gentle wind, and Loki doesn’t know why he’s so afraid, only that there is not much left of sanity in the man’s eyes. Loki pulls and pulls and pulls at the black thread, and he can feel _magic_ and so much love it hurts in his breast.

He says _I’m sorry_ and flicks his knife through the last three threads, tearing the corner of the man’s mouth as the trees wail.

The man says, thick with blood, _No, child. It is I who am sorry_ , and presses his palm to Loki’s head.

Loki wakes with a start. Pabbi is there, holding him, and says, “Loki?” in his gentle way, but Loki can’t stop the shudders that race through him.

“I dreamt of him again.”

“Dreamt of who?”

“The skinny man with the dark hair. His mouth is always sewn shut, but this time I helped him cut through the threads.”

Pabbi’s fingers still in his hair. “You have not told me of this man before.”

“He looked so wild and so sad and so scared,” Loki whispers, and buries his face in Pabbi’s side. “But Pabbi, he is so scared because Thanos is coming. He told me that the Titan won’t stop until he has collected the six gems, and that the time of the Infinity War is upon us.”

The blood runs out of his father’s face like sand through an hourglass. Loki has never seen his father look like this, and he sits up, scared now too. “Pabbi? What is it?”

“Tell me everything the man said.”

Loki does.


End file.
